Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[Sue]

Up 31% where I live (Hackney). But then so many people seem to be acting like it's all over and vaccination rates are 65%/60%/40% so it's not a huge surprise really.

 

[StoneRoad]

Locally to me, we have very high vaccinations rates [73.5% boostered and 92.5% first dose] ...

But because people have the attitude "it's all over now" we have a local case rate of 'only' 272/100,000, which is up 375% in the past seven days to the 11th March.

Which isn't great, as OH is shielding [& therefore, so are the rest of the household] as they have a minor surgical procedure on Monday.

 

[cupid_stunt]

We had the bronze award a few days ago -

England's 10 worst Covid hotspots

• Somerset West and Taunton - 913.6 cases per 100,000 people
• Hastings - 907.6 cases per 100,000 people
• Worthing - 897.7 cases per 100,000 people

We are now on 1,348.

 

[gentlegreen]

We're nudging ahead of those in Bristol 5.
It was too wet for the park so I went to the shops for the first time this week and only one other customer and one till person masked in Tesco.
Zero masks in the deli / veggie food shop where all the staff are in their 20s.

Nice and airy and I have my ffp2 so it was probably worth it for recreational calories ...

 

[BristolEcho]

It's all going to plan isn't it from the Government point of view? One area of Bristol no one is wearing masks at all in the Tesco so I did stop too. Still take it with me though and generally wear it.

 

[weepiper]

All of Edinburgh is well over 1000 per 100,000. The area where my shop is is on 1232 and where my flat is is 1109. Bits of the catchment for my kids' school are on 1921.

 

[teuchter]

My observations looking at the numbers at the moment -

The most recent rises in positive tests and in hospital admissions (about 2-3 weeks ago) start pretty much in line with each other. There's not a lag, which suggests to me that the rise in hospital admissions with Covid is largely people with Covid rather than because of Covid.

It's been over two weeks since the rise in positive tests became apparent but as far as I can see there is no discernable rise in deaths, nor in "patients in mechanical ventilation beds". Both of these figures remain small and on a very gradual decline.

So, lots of people are getting Covid but it's not resulting in a significant level of serious illness.

 

[elbows]

The most recent rises in positive tests and in hospital admissions (about 2-3 weeks ago) start pretty much in line with each other. There's not a lag, which suggests to me that the rise in hospital admissions with Covid is largely people with Covid rather than because of Covid.

The fact there are plenty in the 'with' category explains why there is no lag when you are looking only at the start date of a rise in admissions, but 'for' hospitalisations are still expected to follow a bit later on, with the usual lag. So you cant use the no-lag start date to claim there are negligible 'for' cases appearing and further driving the subsequent rise seen a week or so later than the rise first began.

The weekly data on 'for' and 'with' should be available tomorrow if the old schedule of data releases is still in place for NHS England. Unfortunately it shows numbers in hospital beds rather than being available directly for admissions data, but I still expect it to show some signs of an increase in 'for' cases. I wont bother to graph last weeks version of the data since we should be so close to the next version, but what was visible a week ago was the the 'with' numbers had started to rise, and the 'for' numbers had stopped falling and might just have been starting to rise, but too early to make that claim with confidence at the time.

On a related note, I've moaned before about English data for probable hospital-acquired infections being delivered in a somewhat obfuscated manner, but from what I can make out these have been rising sharply again in all regions, which explains some chunk of the 'with' patients.

Of particular note with hospital admissions figures is that the oldest two age groups have been seeing the most notable rises. For England as a whole the 85+ group is back to about the same levels seen at the first Omicron peak, and the 65-84 group is somewhat close to matching its previous Omicron peak too. In the 18-64 age group the recent numbers are only about half what they reached in that age group in late December/early January Omicron peak.

It's been over two weeks since the rise in positive tests became apparent but as far as I can see there is no discernable rise in deaths, nor in "patients in mechanical ventilation beds". Both of these figures remain small and on a very gradual decline.

So, lots of people are getting Covid but it's not resulting in a significant level of serious illness.

Still a bit early for me to look for death increases, especially as I use ONS data more than anything else these days (because they distinguish between deaths primarily caused by Covid and others) and ONS data has additional lag. And non-ONS data is affected by variations in testing.

As for mechanical ventilation figures, there have been some very modest rises in some English regions in very recent days, not enough to draw attention to yet. Plus we know Omicron changed that picture, and also that the ages of people being hospitalised for Covid has an impact on proportion who end up ventilated. This form of data is only a partial guide to disease severity, since there are other ways people can end up seriously ill from Covid.

In summary, I think the fact its older age groups that are showing the biggest rise in hospital admissions/diagnoses is the largest cause for concern right now. But I doubt it will impact on government policy or media reporting and wider perceptions unless it continues to grow substantially from the levels its already reached in the latest data.

 

[teuchter]

The fact there are plenty in the 'with' category explains why there is no lag when you are looking only at the start date of a rise in admissions, but 'for' hospitalisations are still expected to follow a bit later on, with the usual lag. So you cant use the no-lag start date to claim there are negligible 'for' cases appearing and further driving the subsequent rise seen a week or so later than the rise first began.

Fair enough - but it means that at the moment I look at the increases in hospital admissions numbers and don't feel that it's something to get too worried about - obviously if they started accelerating faster it would be different. They are also still well below the previous peak, even though we know from the last set of ONS data (and also from what the ZOE study reports) that the number of people with Covid just now is very likely at least as high as it was in the previous peak(s) this year.

 

[elbows]

I worry about it mostly because of the data by age this time around - we know that Covid has more potential to kill in older age groups, and in all the previous waves the older age groups did a pretty good job of hiding from the virus, albeit with obvious exceptions within sub groups of that older population via hospital acquired infections and care homes being vulnerable.

They've still got some things on their side, such as older age groups having fewer contacts in general, including during normal non-pandemic times, greater chance that many are still being careful in that age group, etc. But they do seem more exposed than ever before this time around. I may start to fret about unknowns in terms of waning immunity from booster shots, but the boosters with non-Oxford AZ vaccines have probably undone a potential weakness of that particular vaccine in terms of faster antibody waning seen in some earlier pre-Omicron vaccine data after 2 doses of AZ. A very large chunk of the older age groups dont have the immune advantage of vaccine+previous infection though. But there are still certain properties of Omicron that appear to help when it comes to severe disease and death risks, and at least the greater exposure of older age groups to the virus has only happened well into the vaccine era, with high vaccine uptake rates in the older age groups unlike the sorry situation in Hong Kong.

I really dont like the steepness of the hospitalisation figures in the older age groups in some regions of England, and will share some of those graphs another day. I cant go completely nuts about it yet though because how long it continues at that trajectory matters greatly in terms of whether the shit is really going to be considered to have hit the fan, and because I dont get 'for' and 'with' versions of that data in particular, forcing me to wait for other indicators such as deaths.

And I dont really know how essential the next boosters will turn out to be, or when the optimal timing of them will turn out to be. If this 'Omicron part 2 (BA.2)' wave doesnt go very well then the timing of those boosters could end up being blamed, or it might not pan out like that at all.

Whatever happens with the current wave, I doubt I will become much more relaxed about the current strategy unless we see the evolution of the virus, and thus the frequency of large waves, settle down to a much greater extent than has been the case so far.

 

[William of Walworth]

Here is a chart of the "Headline Summary" from Public Health Wales showing graphs for cases etc.

(Next to it is a tab leading to page for a general/broader summary)

I'm pretty poor at stats-- how bad (or not) do case-rates look in Wales, please?

I'm in a bit of a hurry I'm afraid .
Help welcomed

 

[l'Otters]

Here is a chart of the "Headline Summary" from Public Health Wales showing graphs for cases etc.

(Next to it is a tab leading to page for a general/broader summary)

I'm pretty poor at stats-- how bad (or not) do case-rates look in Wales, please?

I'm in a bit of a hurry I'm afraid .
Help welcomed

Bad by what measure?

Do you need to decide whether to do something?

Short & slightly vague answer: It’s high, there’s a lot of people with covid in Wales…
It’s a lot worse in England and Northern Ireland… and worse than that again in Scotland…

 

[William of Walworth]

Bad by what measure?

Do you need to decide whether to do something?

Short & slightly vague answer: It’s high, there’s a lot of people with covid in Wales…
It’s a lot worse in England and Northern Ireland… and worse than that again in Scotland…

I meant that 'm rubbish at stats and graphs on their own -- I tend to need wiise interpretations alongside!

I just need a bit of help interpreting really. Will return to this thread later though -- must dash.!!

 

[Orang Utan]

I meant that 'm rubbish at stats and graphs on their own -- I tend to need wiise interpretations alongside!

I just need a bit of help interpreting really. Will return to this thread later though -- must dash.!!

Just ignore them unless you absolutely need to know for practical reasons

 

[Fruitloop]

One thing I wonder, with the whole 'with' vs 'because of' Covid thing in terms of hospitalizations, is how many people without Covid are in hospital because of Covid.

 

[elbows]

One thing I wonder, with the whole 'with' vs 'because of' Covid thing in terms of hospitalizations, is how many people without Covid are in hospital because of Covid.

The description on the NHS England webpage where such data is published does draw attention to that sort of thing too, I've put that bit in bold in the quote below:

A subset of those who contract Covid in the community and are asymptomatic, or exhibited relatively mild symptoms that on their own are unlikely to warrant admission to hospital, will then be admitted to hospital to be treated for something else and be identified through routine testing. However these patients still require their treatment in areas that are segregated from patients without Covid, and the presence of Covid can be a significant co-morbidity in many cases. Equally, while the admission may be due to another primary condition, in many instances this may have been as a result of contracting Covid in the community. For example research has shown that people with Covid are more likely to have a stroke (Stroke Association); in these cases people would be admitted for the stroke, classified as ‘with’ Covid despite having had a stroke as a result of having Covid.

(from Statistics » COVID-19 Hospital Activity )

Not that they cover every possibility in that description, eg as usual they dont want to draw attention to hospital-acquired infections.

We are never going to get a full and accurate picture of hospitalisations and deaths and the true role covid played in each case. I had to come to terms with that reality long before this pandemic because its true with plenty of other diseases and causes as well. And wider medical and societal opinions always have an influence over such things, including death certificate listed causes and attitudes towards covid changing over time. This stuff is one of the main reasons I continue to put 'for' and 'with' in quotation marks, I dont treat them as solid, well defined things we can perfectly rely on, and I moan at people who use such data to downplay this virus and its impact.

 

[elbows]

Oops I just realised that I missed out specifically mentioning the variation of the above that actually responds to your question - assuming I understood your post properly, this variation jsut requires slightly different timing, eg someone has covid but then suffers health complications as a result later on, beyond the period when they would actually test positive for the virus. Is that the sort of thing you meant?

 

[teuchter]

The relevance of all this depends on what your purpose is in looking at the numbers.

For me at this moment, I am looking at them to see if there's anything particular to worry about - for example signs of a developing situation that might require the return of restrictions or that is putting certain groups at increasing risk.

A broad sense of (messily defined) "with" vs "for" numbers is useful in making these judgements.

For someone who is looking at the numbers with the purpose of making an assessment of past public health strategy, who might want to criticise it for being too lax or too restrictive or who wants to "downplay its impact" or whatever, then these distinctions have different implications and relevance.

Once you start looking at things like people in hospital without covid but because of consequential effects of having previously had covid, then you are potentially getting into an argument with those who want to point out people who are in hospital because of consequential effects of restrictions that they think were uneccessary, and so on.

 

[elbows]

Well I didnt say they were utterly useless, if I thought they had no value at all then I wouldnt have bothered talking about them and making graphs about them so much.

But you already know by now that I will have a go at people who use them in certain ways or try to make more out of them than it is actually safe to do so. Especially as the NHS itself says the classification is done on a 'best endeavours' basis and so the quality of the data may not be that high.

From a practical point of view in regards hospital pressures (which in turn affect policy decisions), both 'for' and 'with' cases have implications. Obviously the 'for' people that would not have been hospitalised at all if they didnt have covid represent a distinct additional burden, whereas the 'with' cases would often have been taking up beds anyway, but the management of those cases still places an additional burden on the NHS due to infection control, potentially increased length of stay, worse outcomes etc.

Anyway here is the latest data published today in the Primary Diagnoses Supplement spreadsheet at Statistics » COVID-19 Hospital Activity

As I always say, this data shows people with covid in hospital beds in England, not daily admissions. It did what I predicted it would when I spoke about this the other day, because such a prediction was not hard to make since it would have been odd and unexpected if the 'for' cases hadnt increased in the current circumstances.

 

[Fruitloop]

Oops I just realised that I missed out specifically mentioning the variation of the above that actually responds to your question - assuming I understood your post properly, this variation jsut requires slightly different timing, eg someone has covid but then suffers health complications as a result later on, beyond the period when they would actually test positive for the virus. Is that the sort of thing you meant?

Yeah, that was exactly it. As you say, super hard to quantify, but obviously being ignored by the minimizers who are trumpeting the 'with' not 'because of' nonsense. Anecdotally it's not at all uncommon though, and might well be quite significant

 

[two sheds]

would that include long covid? Although that would I presume normally be picked up during that initial period.

 

[elbows]

What I expect to happen on that front in the medium-long term is that all sorts of long term population health aspects will show up in all sorts of ways in data for decades. There will be numerous attempts to unpick the effects caused by lockdowns/fear of seeking treatment in a timely way, healthcare backlogs etc, from the direct physical consequences of infection. Agendas and politics will influence the narrative and which aspects are shouted about the loudest.

 

[2hats]

Latest ONS infection survey indicates an increase to around 1 in 20 infected (varies across nations, regions, age cohorts, but increases everywhere), with BA.2 a major driver.

 

[elbows]

The BBC has been mostly avoiding stories about the hospital situation, but I doubt that is sustainable.

The Guardian had a piece last night:

Rise in UK Covid admissions leading to hospital illness, absence and delays

Hospitals in southern England worst affected, with Devon recording highest ever numbers of Covid patients

www.theguardian.com

The number of people in hospital with Covid in Devon has doubled in a fortnight and is higher than at any other point in the pandemic, according to the NHS Devon clinical commissioning group (CCG).

According to data for England, the number of people in hospital with Covid increased from 8,210 on 3 March to 11,346 on Thursday.

While rising infection levels in the community mean the number of people in hospital who have an “incidental” Covid infection is likely to be rising, the number of those who are being treated primarily for Covid rose from 3,445 on 3 March to 4,475 on 15 March, according to NHS England.

In addition, analysts have suggested hospital-acquired Covid infections are rising.

Dr David Strain, a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter medical school, told the Guardian the situation was continuing to deteriorate.

“What we are seeing here is what we’re expecting the rest of the country to be seeing over the next week to 10 days,” said Strain, adding that the pressure on hospital beds had coincided with the rise of the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron.

The article also discusses the pressure that even the 'with' cases causes on hospitals, waiting lists etc.

I'll probably do some graphs later when todays data is out. Daily admissions for England have really been soaring this week.

 

[elbows]

And here is a twitter thread the Guardian linked to when they mentioned hospital-acquired infections in that article:

The proportions involved probably go some way to explaining why hospital-acquired infections is something I've droned on about all the way through the pandemic. I considered even lower percentages like 5% to be noteworthy, and now the percentages estimated are so much higher.

 

[elbows]

Fuck Rees-Mogg. The pandemic was serious, the lockdowns and rules were serious, rule-makers being seen to adhere to the rules was serious.

Jacob Rees-Mogg dismisses partygate as 'trivial fluff'

The cabinet minister says war in Ukraine has returned a sense of "fundamental seriousness" to politics.

www.bbc.co.uk

Cabinet minster Jacob Rees-Mogg has dismissed concerns over parties in Downing Street during lockdown as "fluff" and "fundamentally trivial".

Speaking at the Conservative spring conference, he said war in Ukraine "was a reminder that the world is serious".

 

[Numbers]

Cunt.

 

[Numbers]

Just watched the Gold Cup at Cheltenham. 60,000 people packed in like sardines.
Will be interesting to see if anything comes of it like it did 2 years ago.

 

[BassJunkie]

Totally this. Mrs BassJunkie has been off school since last Thursday. She's triple jabbed and a secondary school teacher. My first poker game for 2 years this Saturday has now been cancelled because the host has tested positive. Despite my best efforts (trying to not to treat Mrs BassJunkie like a pariah) I'm still testing negative. But feel like a positive test is imminent.

Although this makes me very grateful for the vaccinations, if this was 2020 it would be a lot more terrifying.

Apologies for replying to myself, but, so, it came to pass. I tested positive on Thursday morning.

Feeling quite rough, which gives me another reason to thank medicine and science for the vaccines. Still, getting 12 hours sleep a night. And 3 hours sleep an afternoon.

It looks like it's going to be a quiet weekend.

Now I must go an update my vote on that other thread.

 

[elbows]

Daily hospital admissions/diagnoses for England by age group. Data goes up to March 15th. Same data shown three different ways.

The 85+ age group has exceeded the level seen in the first Omicron peak. Less hospital cases in ages under 65 are the only reason the overall totals dont match or exceed the earlier Omicron peak yet.