Thread by @chrischirp

🧵 Short Thread on state of Covid in England:

TLDR good news on new infections, admissions & deaths, bad news on Long Covid, unclear what will happen with latest variants (BA.4, BA.5 & BA.2.12.1 all on the up).

1/11

Firstly variants... We can see that dominant Omicron variant BA.2 that caused the March surge is falling back now.

But its decline seems to have slowed a bit - I thought it would have lost its dominance by now but that is likely at least a week or two away still. 2/11

3 Omicron subvariants on the up: BA.4/BA.5 (dominant in SA & Portugal) & BA.2.12.1 (dominant in US) - risen from 0.5% each to ~5% each in 3 weeks. Portugal & US seeing a new moderate surge in admissions. From US looks like BA.4/5 will win out over BA.2.12.1 eventually. 3/11

These variants are mostly in the South and Midlands - but even in East of England and London, only 20% of sequenced cases by w/e 21 May - so still too early to see an impact in overall infections yet. 4/11

And ONS measured infections (*random testing*) shows prevalence still falling in England.

Infections in kids lowest by age group (<1%) so that's good news for schools (and exams!) this summer. 5/11

Hospital admissions and deaths are falling still too - back at levels last seen summer 2021 (still far higher though than summer 2020!). 6/11

But the really high infections we've had since Omicron are bad news for long covid - record numbers of people reporting symptoms continuing at least 4 weeks to ONS. *2 million* people now - 619K from Omicron era. 7/11

And Omicron has been worst for the older age groups in terms of long covid. Really sharp increases in over 25s and over 50s especially.

Meanwhile 376K have had long covid for more than *2 years*. 8/11

@Daltmann10 , my lovely colleague on @IndependentSage , who runs very large Long Covid studies puts it well - initial hopes that vaccines would get rid of long covid have faded. We are *not* living with Covid successfully.

theguardian.com/world/2022/jun… 9/11

So what next? Still likely that BA4/5/2.12.1 will cause a surge in infections & admissions once they are dominant - likely shifted back to end June/early July now. Also I suspect a smaller surge than we saw in Jan/March 10/11

Nonetheless, more people will get sick & die. More people will be off work again & more people will develop Long Covid. Even long covid that resolves in a few months is serious for the person experiencing it! There are basic mitigations we could do but we aren't. We should. 11/11

PS here's a tweet thread I did recently on Long Covid and the economy.