Thread by @ADMBriggs

Latest PHE covid/flu report thread.
Covers 16th - 22nd Nov.

COVID rates and hospitalisations are falling, but there are important big regional variations.

And the number of children and over 65y/os getting their flu jab is already higher than last year!

gov.uk/government/sta…

Welcome signs that case numbers and case rates are falling both in PHE data & ONS survey

Not going to disentangle positivity rates here, mass/lateral flow testing is in pillar 2, many will have confirmatory PCRs, & ideally symptomatic vs asymptomatic would be reported separately

And these falling case rates are across ALL age groups and ALL regions.

Although when you look in more detail at the regional data, you can see that in some regions (e.g. SE, London), rates among some older age groups still look to be rising

And the NW/NE no longer completely dominate, with high rates in SE

(worth noting ONS data by age is pretty consistent with this, but by region, ONS suggest that community rates in NE and East Mids may still be going up)

Rates also falling across all ethnicities and deprivation groups (except for more deprived 10-16y/os), but inequalities remain.

No real change in number of outbreaks in care homes or schools. There are still a lot of them, but a relief to see that they're not rising after last week's jump.

This is also the first week in the past 2.5 months that there's been a drop in total hospital admission rates.

But this is driven by falls in North and East Midlands. Admissions still rising across the South

Also overall fall in ITU admissions driven by drops in NE and NW. But worrying rise in the Midlands, est West Mids where admission rates haven't yet started to fall.

And death rates (with their 3-4 week lag following infection) still continue to trend up (note recent deaths are not included), and excess mortality remains high.

Here the North does still dominate. But hopefully this will start to fall soon.

Still very little flu (just three admissions and three cases identified through the national surveillance programme).

And flu vaccine uptake whilst low among pregnant women (may be a data error here), it's already higher than last yr for over 65yrs and yr 2 and 3 children. 🙌

So in general, this is pretty good news.

National restrictions from 2-3 wks ago, plus all the local measures (COVID secure teams, schools teams, comms, local contact tracing etc) seem to have had a role.

But case rates, hospitalisation rates & death rates remain relatively very high, plus there's big geographic variation.

Everyone's actions still really matter.

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