Thread by @chrischirp

THREAD: quick overview of where we are with Covid in UK - and end of a dashboard era...

TLDR: going to move to using ONS infection survey only from now on, cases still high, trend uncertain, hospitalisations and deaths falling 1/12

firstly, vaccination isn't really happening - very low numbers of 1st, 2nd or 3rd vaccinations now 2/12

PCR tests are dropping like a stone - and this is what we used to calculate to positivity rates. So they are becoming more unreliable. And then, different nations are now changing how they are reporting nations and Scotland is stopping positivity reporting. 3/12

So this is the last week I will be reporting case positivity rates for the forseeable future. From now on it's ONS infection survey only.

Positivity rates show NI increasing, Scotland flat, England and Wales decreasing.

Meanwhile case rates show everywhere decreasing. 4/12

But how reliable are case rates anyway? How many people a) doing LFDs and b) reporting positive tests? We don't know.

If we look at weekly case rates to 26 Jan and compare to weekly incidence from ONS we see significant divergence. 5/12

In fact, up to end of 2021, we see excellent correlation between ONS measured prevalence (red) and dashboard cases (blue). But in recent week this correlation has broken. I don't think we can trust reported cases any more and so I will now move to ONS infection survey only. 6/12

ONS shows increases in all countries except Wales and high prevalence.

Regional increases in South of England. By age, teens and over 50s going up.

It would be a tragedy if ONS infection survey stopped - it's a jewel and envy of the world. We blind ourselves by ending it. 7/12

Omicron subvariant BA.2 is still increasing in all UK nations. It's now 14% in England but close to 50% in N Ireland. Likely dominant there by now. Could explain continued case rises there?
Plus in England, BA.2 concentrated in South... where recent increases have been. 8/12

Hospitalisations are coming down steadily in all nations which is excellent news.

Admissions in England are falling quickly but we've had high levels since summer 2019. And this comes with consequences. 9/12

On a range of performance indicators (up to Dec 2021), things are much worse than pre 2020.
For time to diagnosis, we can see NHS catching up in summer 2020 - but they didn't get chance in summer 2021 with Delta, and now Omicron has made things worse again. 10/12

Deaths have peaked whether looking at deaths within 28 days of a positive test or ONS death certificate data. Both measures show Omicron increase.

But recent data does show dashboard deaths now overestimating "cause of death" deaths for first time. 11/12

So to summarise - am now going to use weekly and a bit lagged ONS survey only (for as long as it's available :-( ).

Transmission remains high, particularly in children. BA.2 continues to grow but UKHSA data suggests does *not* evade prev Omicron infection (good news!). 12/12