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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

teuchter said:
There's nothing at all to suggest that death totals are up. It's just reporting lag. Look at the numbers by date of death.

Nothing there that implies any change from the trend of a very gradual decline that's been going on for the past month or so.


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The 7-average of reported deaths are now at 100 per day, compared to around 160 at the start of November, which is positive, but could change again as omicron spreads further in the older age groups.

There's certainly some positive signs, but still too early to know how it's going to play out over the coming weeks, I have my fingers cross, but it's still squeaky bum time for the government.
 
pbsmooth said:
Number of people in hospital has certainly jumped. Number of people on ventilators has not. Might be a positive for the idea we're not as likely to see so many serious illnesses and deaths due to omicron severity and vaccines.
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There's an interesting interview in The Times with Chris Hopson, the head of NHS Providers, covering this.

NHS chiefs do not believe that the threshold for new Covid-19 restrictions has been crossed despite a surge in hospital admissions.

The number of patients with the coronavirus on wards in England rose to 11,452 yesterday, the highest since February and up 61 per cent in a week.

While concerned by the increase in admissions, NHS leaders have been reassured by the fact that serious illness among the elderly has not risen significantly.
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Chris Hopson, the head of NHS Providers, told The Times: “Trust chief executives are saying we should be careful interpreting the daily Covid hospital data.

“Although the numbers are going up and going up increasingly rapidly, the absence of large numbers of seriously ill older people is providing significant reassurance. But they are aware that this may change after the Christmas period.

“Trust CEOs know that the government has a high threshold to cross before it will introduce extra restrictions and can see why, in the absence of that surge of severely ill older people, that threshold hasn’t been crossed yet.”
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Full article, with busted paywall, here - archive.ph

If cases have peaked in London and neighbouring counties, and the increased hospital admissions are more evenly spread across the country, the NHS may just be able to cope, and if the number of people on ventilators/daily deaths remain flat or even drop, the government may just get away with it.

Personally I remain concerned about the coming weeks, but just a little more hopeful than a few weeks ago.
 
bimble said:
Would we have fared better through the year if we’d used the other ones instead all the way through?
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I don't think so, IIRC they all provided very similar levels of protection from the other variants.

Also, we would never have had enough supplies of the mRNA ones in time, leaving a lot of people unprotected for much longer without the AZ one.
 
bimble said:
Would we have fared better through the year if we’d used the other ones instead all the way through?
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AZ has always been of lower effectiveness even against the initial variants but was massively less expensive so allowed far greater numbers to get jagged at a lower cost, I think we were better off going the way we did but we'll never really know
 
And even the extended gap between dose 1 and 2 turned out to be a good decision.
Wasn't the original idea that they might not get away with a third dose of the same vector (might have acquired too much immunity to it) ?
 
_Russ_ said:
AZ has always been of lower effectiveness even against the initial variants but was massively less expensive so allowed far greater numbers to get jagged at a lower cost, I think we were better off going the way we did but we'll never really know
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Sure it was a little less effective in preventing infection, but when it came to the most important measure of hospital admissions & deaths, AZ was just as good as Pfizer.

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cupid_stunt said:
Sure it was a little less effective in preventing infection, but when it came to the most important measure of hospital admissions & deaths, AZ was just as good as Pfizer.

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Yep, I do think though that even without new variants it would have been discontinued as a first choice vaccine (at least in richer countries) due to having a higher side effect rate, and other options being available. But there was nothing wrong with choosing to use it at the time.
 
The other benefit/drawback of AZ compared to the mRNA two, was that AZ can be stored at normal fridge temperatures, instead of the "cold chain" required by PN and Moderna.
At the earlier stages of the UK rollout, the PN was more or less restricted to hospital or urban hubs.
 
I only look at headline figures and, to be honest, don't often read much beyond that. But even on that superficial reading we seem to have gone from 'much less severe illness and the NHS will hold' to 'the numbers are already beginning to show there may be a problem for the NHS', even in the few days from Boxing Day. Might not be the case, might end up that just particular hospitals end up struggling. But when you add in NYE, even if it's smaller this year and people show some restraint, things aren't looking too optimistic (as much with staff shortages as anything else).
 
Is noone questioning the validity of the testing for arrivals in the UK? So I went to visit family this year after not seeing them for 2 and a half years. I filled in a passenger locator form (plf). And paid about 50 quid for a day two testing package, which arrived on time and I completed and sent back and awaited a result to remain in isolation.
And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Then it was time to go home but I couldnt be released from quarantine so I missed my flight.

And waited.

Eventually it came 2 days after i should have been home. . Negative. Phew.


But if it smells like a scam, and looks like a scam, and we are told it's a scam and doing some research you can see that the directors of the company are exactly the type of people who are friends with people in Government who we know are scammers, you can safely assume its a scam and take necessary precautions.
Personally, I self tested every two days, whilst there, wore a mask, tested negative before flying, triple vaxxed. And did my stuff as planned. So not trying to dodge anything. But why these extortionate prices. And what happens with all the information i provided?
I just got the test result this morning, i got back 2 days ago.
Someone gets rich on these contracts, and we will be forced to do it forever, like that no liquids ban. Noone even remembers why. How come noone is using liquid explosives outside of airports?
And I've just provided all my data to the UK government, . Current mobile number, email address address when in UK, as part of the PLF. . So it may not be as pointless as it seems.
 
Boris - you were allowed to go to the airport to leave the country and were not required to wait for the result. I did the same last week and checked all the requirements.
 
brogdale said:
Worrying trends:

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That last portion of the graph is almost a perfect mirror of Dr (just the facts) Campbell's extended line he drew the other day, in completely the opposite direction.
I wont stop warning people of the subtle and sometimes not so subtle spin on his channel as so many seem to think he is a pure data source
 
pbsmooth said:
Comparing it to October seems a bit pointless and unhelpful.
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You can always put up another, longer time (frame) axis graph if you find that one unhelpful.
Tbh, it doesn't really matter where you start/stop; the trends are pretty obvious.
 
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cupid_stunt said:
There's an interesting interview in The Times with Chris Hopson, the head of NHS Providers, covering this.
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A response to that article, by Hopson -
Hopson said that hospital chiefs understood that the government had set “a high threshold” for how much pressure the NHS would need to be under from Covid before it would tighten the rules.

“Trust leaders can see why the government is arguing that, in the absence of a surge of a large number of seriously ill older people coming into hospital, that threshold has not yet been crossed,” Hopson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“But we still don’t know if that surge will come. Indeed, the NHS is preparing for it right now,” he added. Eight hospitals in England have begun creating their own “mini-Nightingale” on site to help care for patients at “super-surge” capacity.

Hopson added: “We are therefore in the same place we have been in for the last fortnight. The government needs to be ready to introduce tighter restrictions, at real speed, should they be needed.

“That is somewhat different to suggestions that NHS leaders think there is no need for more curbs. They may be needed, at pace, if the evidence warrants it.”

He was responding to a reporton Friday in the Times, headlined “No need for more Covid curbs, say NHS chiefs”, which said that hospital bosses did not think any new measures were needed.

Hopson also said: “It’s also worth remembering that it will take around a fortnight for any new restrictions to affect the level of hospital admissions. The pattern for hospital admissions over the next fortnight has therefore already been set.”

Referring to the huge recent spike in infections, which caused cases to hit a record high of 189,213 yesterday, Openshaw told BBC Breakfast: “The latest figures show extraordinary rises in infection rates and this is before we’ve had time to see the full effect of what’s happened over Christmas.

“The people currently who are very sadly dying of Covid were probably infected on average about 35 days ago, so this was really before Omicron really started to transmit.


“It’s therefore too early to say what the impact of Omicron is going to be on more severe disease.”

But he warned that hospital admissions due to Covid could increase in the coming weeks as more older people and those not fully vaccinated were infected.
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www.theguardian.com

UK must be poised to introduce swift Covid curbs, says NHS leader

Hospitals prepare for patient ‘super-surge’ as effects of rapid Omicron spread remain uncertain
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
pbsmooth said:
Comparing it to October seems a bit pointless and unhelpful.
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It is always helpful to show how the proportions of things chage over time. And we were still deep in a Delta wave in October.

I'd like to be able to show this data going all the way back through the pademic, but they only started attempting to generate this data in mid 2021. I will post a few charts for the entire period later.

What is seen in the data so far is what was expected - a steady rise in the proportion of 'with' Covid, reflecting the transmission advantage of Omicron and subsequent rise in patients going into hospital for other reasons and happening to have covid, patients catching covid in hospital, and also a rise int he other number which indicates patients being admitted because covid has made them very ill.

Ultimately the intensive care and death data will demonstrate the extent to which Omicron has caused the very worst kinds of health problems. And its still too soon to use either intensive care or deaths data to reach a conclusion about that. I probably need another week or two before I consider the intensive care numbers to be great news, but if they remain steady at levels seen in recent weeks then I certainly will declare it to be good news.
 
_Russ_ said:
That last portion of the graph is almost a perfect mirror of Dr (just the facts) Campbell's extended line he drew the other day, in completely the opposite direction.
I wont stop warning people of the subtle and sometimes not so subtle spin on his channel as so many seem to think he is a pure data source
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Since you keep mentioning this I have forced myself to skim through that part of one of his videos.

He seems to be using the Telegraph and Sir John Bell as sources to back up his claim, which is not a good start.

The main complication when trying to analyse the accuracy of his figures and graph is that its an attempt to show the proportion of the increase in people with covid in hospital beds which are deemed 'incidental'. The official NHS England data that is published and used by the likes of the BBC is not for admissions, its for number of people in hospital beds. So Campbell etc must be trying to estimate the admissions picture by comparing one weeks 'in hospital beds' figure to the next weeks. That isnt really the same as admissions because it incorporates people being discharged too. And its important to note that its not the same format of graph as other people are using, so I wouldnt expect it to point in the same direction as those other graphs.

I dont want to waste a lot of my news years eve trying to replicate what was shown by him, but I will have a brief play around with the figures to see if my attempt in any way aligns with what he shows,
 
Im not sure what you ae looking at, im referring to where he draws his own lines to re-inforces his assertion that 80% of admissions are incindental, its not data its an invention, his guess which turned out to be bollox
 
_Russ_ said:
Im not sure what you ae looking at, im referring to where he draws his own lines to re-inforces his assertion that 80% of admissions are incindental, its not data its an invention, his guess which turned out to be bollox
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Before judging the line he draws it is necessary to understand what the graph he draws it onto the end of is actually showing, since its quite different to the other graphs we see on this subject.

Happily I have been able to reproduce the figures he used for the final part of that graph, and can now properly expose the exact nature of the bollocks of the future projection he drew onto the end of it. And it is indeed total bollocks of the worst sort!

The big flaw in what he did comes down to the nature of what was happening in the final week on the graph. The 21st December was a time where the number of covid patients in hospital beds only rose by 259 compared to the figures a week earlier on the 14th. And so when he digs into the NHS data about 'with' and 'for', he see's that of that 259 increase in patients in hospital beds, the number being treated primarily for covid has only increased by 45 from a week earlier, and the 'incidental' number has increased by 214. When plotted as proportions, this gives a nice low value for the proportion of the increase that were down to people whose covid infection had landed them in hospital in the first place. And this serves his purpose, so he makes a big deal of it.

However the next weeks data is now available, so I can repeat the exercise and see what actually happened next :) And it is a very different week, with very different dynamics in effect. The week he focussed on would be a bit early to show a lot of people getting seriously ill via the rise in cases in this new Omicron wave, but did have the right timing to show an increase in other patients happening to catch covid incidentally in this wave. By the next week this is no longer the case, far more serious illness incidents have had time to emerge, and so when I crunch the numbers his hugely incorrect assumption about the future is completely exposed:

Increase in people in hospital in England with covid on 28th December compared to 21st December:

8321-6245 = 2076

Incidental covid increase in the same period:

2743-1813 = 930

Primarily treated for covid increase in the same period:

5578-4432 = 1146

Oh fucking dear! So if I stuck this on his graph, the line would shoot back up to over 50%. Lets see if he ever bothers to revisit this now that the latest data shows how wrong he was, and does not show something that serves his wider narrative.

Source of raw data used to do this is Primary Diagnosis Supplement 31 December 2021 (XLSX, 22KB)
 
The latest analysis continues to demonstrate why boosters were considered a big deal when trying to deal with the Omicron waves impact on the NHS:

A booster dose of a Covid vaccine is 88% effective at preventing hospitalisation with the Omicron variant, new data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) suggests.

UKHSA analysed 528,176 Omicron cases and 573,012 Delta cases between 22 November and 26 December in England.

It confirmed that the risk of going to A&E or being admitted to a hospital ward after catching Omicron was roughly half that of the older Delta variant, while the risk of hospital admission alone with Omicron was approximately one-third of that for Delta.
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The new data confirms that two doses of the AstraZeneca, Pfizer or Moderna vaccines offers little protection against symptomatic infection with Omicron. But protection against severe disease appears to be holding up much better against the new variant.

A single vaccine dose reduces the risk of need hospital treatment by 52%. Adding the second dose increased the protection to 72% though after 25 weeks later that protection had waned or faded to 52%. Added a third dose boosted that to 88% two weeks later.

The health secretary Sajid Javid said: “This is more promising data which reinforces just how important vaccines are. They save lives and prevent serious illness. This analysis shows you are up to 8 times more likely to end up in hospital as a result of COVID-19 if you are unvaccinated.”
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Thats from the 15:45 entry on the BBC live updates page https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-59835932

edit - they now have an article about this Covid booster 88% effective against hospital treatment with Omicron
 
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