UKC

It seems that hospital admissions of Covid 19 cases are rising.

Is this the beginning of another wave or just a blip?

Do we believe the WHO, which says that the pandemic could be nearing an end?

Bit early to say?

https://health-study.joinzoe.com/data#interactive-map

Edit: and the WHO guy has revised his statement a bit ...

https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20220922-who-chief-says-end-of-covid-p...

I don’t think it’s too early, and follows the standard pattern of the last few years - period of levelling off then a rise.  Just hope it’s a small wave.  

It's getting closer to endemic, so R fluctuates above and below 1 (winter & summer respectively?) but in the long term, like flu, R**N is 1 as it's neither going away nor exploding*. Although unlike flu we don't have a hundred years of experience to be that confident about that.

*a steady state...

R**N - all the R values multiplied together for a year or decade or a geometric mean raised to a high power (hundreds).

A new mutation or hybridisation with another virus can change all that, but hopefully we are at the pandemic/endemic transition of a once in a hundred year event.

Christ, who cares about a virus that is now mostly harmless?  Lives to lead and all that.

I thought about an expansive reply, but decided to test the water with short one.

Not a minor infection for some. 

Hospital admissions are rising. Up by 17% in a week.

Aye. And loads of folk off work who need to be earning money. 

We don't need to care about infections, but hospital admissions are a massive issue because we have a health service in tatters. We haven't got the resources to cope with covid and flu, which I guess we can consider alongside each other as essentially the same problem. 

Really, the problem is the NHS, not covid per se.

Unless there's a new variant of serious concern then it's a part of life I'm afraid. I'm going to stay ignorant to what going on with Covid until I hear about any development of concern.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/covid_omicron_side_effects-7520...

Long covid anyone?

Admissions WITH it are rising.  Which they will, of course, if the caseload is higher.

I've not seen an official figure for admissions FOR it recently.  That's the more significant one which would suggest more immune escape and thus more severe cases.

One of the other consultants who works with my wife was hospitalized about a month ago with covid, ICU, really really ill and is now off work still recovering at his parents.

The whole thing must be really scary for some people and I'm just glad I'm not one of them.

Cheers

Toby

Yep. For me, it was mild and I've subsequently had a cold which took me out for longer.

However, I know too many people for whom Covid was awful, including people who died, people who were hospitalised and many with ongoing issues which went on for months and, in 2 cases, years.

But, as another poster pointed out, it's also an extra load on an already struggling health service which has knock on effects elsewhere (e.g. cancer treatment).

People who claim we should pay no attention to it and get on with our lives are not thinking it through. We're not talking about getting hysterical or overly dramatic, just consideration for the consequences of an uptick in cases.

Yes losing your job due to ill health (long covid) when inflation is sky high isn't exactly the best of timing.

It's brilliant that the number of deaths and hospitalisations are falling. But many of the long covid community who are unable to work a year after the initial infection were not hospitalised, and there is prescious little help or support financial or medical support available for them. 

In July it was reported that up to 5% of Omicron patients went on to develop Long Covid (symptoms ongoing for more than three months).

In the last 7 days we had around 28,000 positive cases in the UK, so that's 1,400 people in the UK sentenced to Long Covid. Assuming the rate of infection remains constant, that's almost 73k people a year.

*If* COVID is becoming more like seasonal flu??? (Not a dismissal as flu can kill the elderly, vulnerable and unlucky)

Then an uptick now as we enter the flu season is to be expected. It's the equinox today, welcome to Autumn!

I finally had it a few weeks ago.  It was horrendous flu...for one day, then a snotty but extremely mild (even compared to usual) cold for 6, with no lasting effects.

One of the most useful things we could possibly learn about it is why it hits some people far worse than others.  I class as "vulnerable" but not "extremely vulnerable" due to pre-existing conditions, so I guess those lists aren't quite right?

While the average person probably shouldn't get worked up about it, it is important on a population basis, in the same way as the flu stats are.  Each wave brings significant issues in terms of both short and long-term sickness absence, and healthcare pressure. Having another peak of 15% of hospital beds and a similar proportion of GP appointments being used for covid when there isn't exactly a surfeit of either is a real problem.

All I can say is that, having just had Covid again, despite being fully vaccinated and having first had it less than a year ago, I think it's well worth avoiding.  It seems to be taking between 1 and 2 weeks to get back to being negative, even on lateral flow, and longer than that to be firing on all cylinders again. 

They are but they are more rules of thumb and is generally acknowledging that other conditions make the risk higher comparatively eg if you start with breathing issues then a bad case of covid will be amplified.  Doesnt mean you will get it but if you got exactly the same symptoms as someone without you would be in a worse position.

Fair point.  One of those conditions is asthma, and during that day there was certainly a period when breathing was considerable effort (but nowhere near enough to go to hospital).

It's getting me a booster so I suppose it has upsides, but it would be really useful to know what differentiates serious vs. non-serious vs. asymptomatic cases.

all we can go on is ONS figures as no way to report?

Past experience has told us it's not particularly seasonal in that it doesn't die off as easily in summer as flu virus does. What is happening is that people are going back to schools and work, and thus its more easily transmitted to more people quicker.  Same happens every year.

Colder weather, so more rime indoors.

But schools returning is probably the biggest cause; my colleague came down with a cold brought home by his kids from school, within a week of returning.

Hopefully...

It's somewhat after the beginning of a new wave, given that both hospital admissions and ONS lag (ONS today reported England back up to 1 in 70 infected as of a week ago; previously it had been 1 in 75).

Admissions have leapt up very suddenly in Yorkshire: they'd been pretty stable for a few weeks, but jumped 50% four days ago.

It's definitely not just down to waning immunity or schools returning. The variant that drove the July wave, BA.5, is being outcompeted either by a new offshoot or another variant or a combination of the two, and the likely candidates (BQ.1.1, BA.2.75.2 - sorry montyjohn...) show considerable immune escape and, more worryingly, escape from existing therapeutics.

The government settled their differences with Valneva back in June this year.  The vaccine is still not publicly available and it doesn't appear to be privately available either in the UK despite the authorisations received from the MHRA and the EMA.

Presumably the immune escape variants are being driven by more changes to the spike protein and to the receptor binding subdomain in particular?  If so, the broader immunogenicity of the Valneva vaccine seems relevant, specifically for mitigation of illness levels rather than preventing infection... 

Presumably from the RBD-targetting mABs but not the compounds targeting the SARS-CoV-2 polymerase?  I haven't followed up reading on how effective the later class are.

There are also the universities; these had giant spikes in previous years despite extensive control measures and limited student access to local bars etc.  Rotten timing to have a significant escape variant emerge just as the mass movement and mixing events of universities switch on.  I gather at least one big university is focusing on hand hygiene at the moment re: Covid...  

Bloody hell, must be cold where you live  

I genuinely don't understand what happened with Valneva in the UK. Javid's ill-informed pronouncement was corrected in Hansard, but the damage was already done: from asserting it wouldn't get authorization to it being authorized in just over 6 months, yet no practical steps mirroring that quite astonishing reversal.

TBH the problems with access to mAbs and anti-virals in the UK are probably more of a factor than their increasingly limited effectiveness at the moment. Evushield isn't available here anyway, so its having been completely escaped is moot for us. Access to Pavloxid turned out to be a minefield of unnecessary obstacles.

I think the effect of new variants is very localized but quite pronounced at the moment, as you'd expect from a new variant. I'd like to be wrong, but I don't otherwise have a good explanation for how localized the uptick in admissions is. I guess we'll see incidence become less localized, if that is the case, in about two weeks when most universities are past freshers' week.

Back to March 2020! Just make sure they sing Happy Birthday twice and should be fine.

The point of this thread is that numbers are rising.

It has also been reported that there is a correlation between Long covid cases, and those with high levels of cholesterol.

Well, maybe not yet, but I'm sure with the coming winter fuel crisis, I'll be back to getting ice on the inside of my windows...