Thanks for that, as you say when it is next updated it will be interesting to see if the 'with' number has become an even greater percentage recently, as implied by the head of NHS providers.
Mind you 400ish out of a 1600 total, is still a fairly large 25%, I doubt it was anything like that in pervious waves.
Well we only have data for the delta wave onwards, but I really doubt it was a trivial proportion in the earlier waves either. Becaue when levels of the virus are high in the community it is inevitable that a fair chunk of 'incidental' cases will be found in hospital, but also hospital covid infections were a very big thing in the first two waves. There have been very occasional articles in the press about how many deaths were attributed to hospital infections and some of the numbers were really large, very many thousands. Testing and vacines have helped compared to the first wave, but its ecpected that Omicron will erode some of those gains. And things like the nature of some hospitals building and layout were probably a big factor, one which also lead to some regional variation. London is actually one of the areas where the hospital infection situation was not allowed to fester as long as it did in some regions. And since June when the data I mentioned became available, it does show a slightly lower percentage of 'with covid' cases than a bunch of other regions.
I do expect the proportion to increase in the next set of data.
It does make sense to swell on these details now, but there are also clear signs that the authorities are going to use this stuff to further justify a lack of new restrictions being brought in. Judging the extent to which it is fair enough for them to do so requires us to keep in mind that this stuff was a real part of the picture shown by data in previous waves too. But its inevitable that it will receive more focus this time because the nature of the Omicron wave pressure is likely to be even more complex than with previous waves, certain agendas are in play, and there are a bunch of plausible scenarios where the amount of pressure remains 'delicately balanced' in a way that could be used to justifyfurther restrictions and justify no further restrictions, depending on how its spun. Indeed I note that if I use Nick Triggle as an establishment guide, he has been going on about all these 'incidental' hospital cases today:
With the Omicron variant leading to milder disease, we need to think differently about Covid now.
Hospital data requires much closer analysis than it once did.
On paper there is the highest number in hospital in England since early March.
But that has been artificially inflated by two things this week.
Firstly, the number of people being discharged from hospital will have dropped significantly over the festive period. Last year the rate of discharged halved, meaning there are likely to be hundreds of patients in hospital who have recovered from Covid.
Secondly a growing proportion of hospitalisations are for what is known as an incidental admission. They are people being treated for something else, but just happen to have Covid.
Last week this stood at about three in 10, but the expectation is this will have increased by now. The latest figures will be released on Thursday.
Therefore, it is possible of the 9,500 in hospital maybe around 6,000 are acutely unwell with Covid.
These numbers are undoubtedly going to go up in the coming weeks as Omicron spreads.
But the raw data will only tell us so much.
Sounds like he is setting the scene for no more restrictions even if some numbers get quite large in the weeks ahead. Thats from the BBC live updates page at 11:03
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-59816431
Ultimately I can still use the very basic admissions data for certain things, especially if it were to very rapidly increase. I will augment it with the other stuff without pushing agendas in a crude manner like Triggle. And I will certainly rely on other data such as number of patients in mechanical ventilation beds in order to judge one form of acute covid pressure more directly. That picture could indeed end up quite different this time, and we are entering the zone where it wont take a huge amount of time to find out. And it can make a big difference. But I wont dismiss the other forms of pressure as irrelevant either, although vaccines will hopefully offer a high degree of protection against some of the worst consequences of hospital infections etc that we saw in the first few waves. There will still be consequences for some though, and it worries me that these wont really show up on peoples radars if the overall numbers are so much lower than what people got used to hearing about in the first few waves. Not that people were used to hearing all that much about hospital infections, which is why I go on about them so much, the authorities dont like to draw attention to that shit and various failings. No wonder, given they have never even bothered to upgrade medical worker mask standards, another cold calculation by the UK establishment.
