Omicron news

[elbows]

The authorities will also be interested to see what impact the Omicron news and peoples sense of winter caution has on behaviour and the spread of Delta in the coming weeks.

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

Which date is the "every kid goes back to school" U-turn scheduled for in January, is it the 3rd?

 

[zahir]

Suggestion here of omicron leading to increased hospitalisation of children

 

[zahir]

Thread

 

[zahir]

elbows (or anyone else) does the thread above sound accurate?

 

[Raheem]

Hope fucking not, because if it's not some sort of nonsense or false alarm we're going to be locked down soon, hard and for a long time.

(ETA: er, and obviously because I don't want children to be hospitalised with Covid.)

 

[zahir]

Yes, I'm not sure what to make of it tbh.

 

[teuchter]

That thread looks a bit sketchy to me.

 

[Raheem]

That thread looks a bit sketchy to me.

He seems to have got the data from another Twitter account, and it's not clear where they got it.

 

[8ball]

The authorities will also be interested to see what impact the Omicron news and peoples sense of winter caution has on behaviour and the spread of Delta in the coming weeks.

My feeling is that a good proportion of people have had enough of it, and Johnson will be forced to take stronger measures.

 

[2hats]

The graphed data are genuine; those are slides from a NICD presentation. Paediatric admissions are certainly up but proportions could be skewed as children may be more likely to be admitted as a precaution. As with other aspects of omicron this needs some more time to clarify.

 

[Raheem]

Ok, but why would children be more likely to be admitted as a precaution?

Don't answer. I should be in bed.

 

[8ball]

Ok, but why would children be more likely to be admitted as a precaution?

Don't answer. I should be in bed.

That occurred to me too.

 

[MrCurry]

If omicron is affecting the young proportionately more than previous variants have, is that an indication that those with stronger immune systems might be more vulnerable to serious illness from it, or is that too simplistic?

 

[LDC]

Ok, but why would children be more likely to be admitted as a precaution?

Don't answer. I should be in bed.

Children go downhill quickly and sometimes scarily so. Little bodies good at compensating until suddenly they're not. Also hard to get good history of how they feel etc. sometimes.

 

[Numbers]

That occurred to me too.

That they should be in bed?

 

[zahir]

This South African press report looks less alarmist.

Covid patients aged under 2 have highest admission rate in South African epicentre

Increase in admissions among very young 'could be precautionary', says doctor

www.thenationalnews.com

There were about 455 admissions from November 11 to 28 in the Gauteng city of Tshwane, where eight people have died, Dr Jassat said during a televised government media briefing on Monday.
In Tshwane, which has recorded the highest increases in admissions, there has been “a very sharp increase”, particularly in the past 10 days, she said.
“When you look at the numbers of admissions by age, what we normally see is a large number of admissions in older people,” she added.
“But in this early resurgence in Tshwane, we are seeing most admissions in the 0-2 age group.
“And we are seeing a large number of admissions in the middle ages, sort of around 28 to 38.”
She said “very high proportions” of young children were being admitted — more than 70 per cent of cases in the 4-and-under age group.
The percentage was much lower in other child age groups, at about 10 per cent in children aged 5 to 9 and slightly less for the age 10-19 group.
However, the percentage of young children admitted with comorbidities, or underlying conditions, was “quite low,” at about 1 per cent.
More than 5 per cent of children aged 5 to 9 who were admitted had underlying conditions, she said. The percentage was slightly less for the 10-to-19 group.
Almost 30 per cent of children aged 4 or under had “severe disease”. The percentage of those admitted with severe disease was slightly higher for the five-to-nine age group, at more than 30 per cent. It was slightly less for the age 10-19 group at about 27 per cent.
“The increase in admissions in young children under 2 could just be precautionary. We don’t have enough information yet,” said Dr Jassat.
“But the indications are not that they are more severe than they have been in the past.
“I think what’s important for us to note is that while we do hospital surge preparedness, this time we may need to look at paediatric preparedness, especially.”
There were eight deaths in the two weeks from November 14 to 28.
Most occurred in older groups, aged 60 to 69. About 1.5 per cent of children aged 4 and under admitted to hospital died. There were no deaths among children aged 5 to 19 in the two-week period.
“It doesn’t look at the moment like there is any increase in severity, but it is early. Admissions do lag about two weeks after cases and it takes some time for patients to have an outcome, so this is something we will watch and give more information in the coming weeks,” said Dr Jassat.
The “vast majority” of those admitted to hospital were unvaccinated.

 

[zahir]

 

[elbows]

The graphed data are genuine; those are slides from a NICD presentation. Paediatric admissions are certainly up but proportions could be skewed as children may be more likely to be admitted as a precaution. As with other aspects of omicron this needs some more time to clarify.

Yes and people should also be made aware that we heard similar things when Delta took off in India earlier in 2021.

There are a bunch of factors that can lead to such reports, very much including the age groups most affected by spiralling infection rates at the time. Concerns about children have extra power to them that people understandably latch onto and amplify. Authorities may even be tempted to make use of this if they are facing a situation where the population dont seem to be taking things seriously enough.

None of that excludes the possibility that a variant may have a different impact on the young, but with Covid in general the risks are so extremely heavily linked to increasing age that even a fair shift in the underlying reality will still leave the older members of society most at risk.

Also the ages of people being vaccinated makes a difference to that picture. Where vaccines protect the older people, its going to skew the proportions so that younger, unvaccinated people start to make up a greater proportion of those requiring hospital treatment.

 

[elbows]

Another reason we might not be best placed to fit such emerging details into our existing understanding of the pandemic is that frankly the situation with children in the UK has been rather underplayed so far.

For example, last time I did the figures (going up to 27th November), in England there had been 5765 hospital admissions/diagnoses of children aged 0-5, and 6074 in those aged 6-17. I dont have death figures to hand but I believe it may be over 100 for the UK so far.

Also the demographics for South Africa are fairly different to ours, and I lack knowledge about which groups were largely spared being infected in past waves there.

None of this means I am saying there is nothing of note to see in the data and reports from South Africa. I'm just drawing attention to other aspects to get a more rounded picture. There is nothing I can say that can short-cut the waiting game in regards discovering the reality of what Omicron is bringing to the pandemic.

 

[elbows]

Todays Indie SAGE:



A bunch of the Omicron slides from it which I screengrabbed. I've put them in spoilers since there are quite a lot of them.

The young admissions data is most certainly of concern, though I wont be able to build on those concerns too much until/unless the same pattern is repeated elsewhere or more clinical info emerges.

Spoiler

 

[Supine]

Risk Assessment released

 

[2hats]

SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England Variant of concern: Omicron, VOC21NOV-01 (B.1.1.529) Technical briefing 30.

 

[elbows]

Covid in Scotland: Omicron cases linked to Steps concert in Glasgow

The number of cases in Scotland increases to 29, including six linked to a Steps concert in Glasgow.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[steeplejack]

fuck's sakes.

will this ever, ever end?

 

[Steel Icarus]

I think "mostly harmless" is a long way from most current estimations.

fuck's sakes.

will this ever, ever end?

Of course. All things must pass.

 

[elbows]

SAGE meeting minutes from 29th November (the ones that were leaked to the BBC some days ago).

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1037831/SAGE_97_Minutes_29_November_2021.pdf

Even if there continues to be good protection against severe disease for individuals from vaccination (including boosters), any significant reduction in protection against infection could still result in a very large wave of infections. This would in turn lead to potentially high numbers of hospitalisations even with protection against severe disease being less affected. The size of this wave remains highly uncertain but may be of a scale that requires very stringent response measures to avoid unsustainable pressure on the NHS. If vaccine efficacy is substantially reduced, then a wave of severe disease should be expected.

It is important to be prepared for a potentially very significant wave of infections with associated hospitalisations now, ahead of data being available.

 

[2hats]

SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England Variant of concern: Omicron, VOC21NOV-01 (B.1.1.529) Technical briefing 30.

(Fig. 10, p. 28) PCR SGTF (probably => omicron) notably rising fastest in SE, London and E Midlands.

 

[gentlegreen]

so ordinarily the PCR spits out "positive or negative" and they don't pay attention to the distribution of markers ?

The cat is definitely out of the bag ... presumably to be confirmed by some sequencing of old samples ?

 

[Badgers]

fuck's sakes.

will this ever, ever end?

Smallpox did