Adam Briggs Profile picture
17 Dec, 16 tweets, 11 min read
PHE's COVID surveillance report covering 7th - 13th December landed today.

It's difficult reading.

It's just the second week since lockdown ended but case rates, hosp admissions, and now ICU admissions are all rising, with more deaths inevitable. 🧵

gov.uk/government/sta…
As was clear from the gov.uk daily data, case numbers rising, and doing so quite rapidly.
This is in all age groups (with over case rates in those over 60yrs being a predictor of hospital admissions)
The rise in case rates is dominated by London, SE & EoE.

The case rates seen in October across N Eng now seem inevitable for much of the S.

Would love to think the rest of the country can avoid big increases in cases over the next couple of weeks but I'm not optimistic.
Important variation in case rates by ethnicity, but less of a differential by deprivation among younger age groups as case rates rise again.
However, ONS data out today continues to show that those who are more deprived as significantly more likely to die from COVID.

In terms of outbreaks/incidents being managed by PHE health protection teams, a small increase in primary schools
And also a rise in care homes after a drop the week before.
Plus the concerning increase in hospital incidents continues.
Hospital admissions are rising again - mainly in SE, London and EoE - and will continue to do so predictably as case rates among more vulnerable adults increase.
And as the gov.uk data shows, there are now more COVID patients in hospital than at the peak of the second wave.

This is not good news. NHS winter has barely started.
ICU admissions is more of a mixed picture by region, but general trend is predictably now up again.
And while deaths are still falling following the second lockdown, they will sadly also soon start trending up again, but this time from a far higher baseline than before.
I know this is all gloomy, but it's just all rising so soon again after lockdown.

Christmas is such an important time but please don't make trips or social visits that can wait.

People are being vaccinated every day. There is cause for optimism, it just needs a bit more time.
Also, there's still hardly any flu and people are also getting those vaccines as well.

That is good.

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More from @ADMBriggs

17 Dec
Test and Trace wk 28 data covering 3/12 to 9/12.

Case numbers up and performance either similar or improving. This is well timed as we head to Christmas.

gov.uk/government/pub…
As is now abundantly clear and has been for some time, case numbers are rising (12% up this week)

(**skip the next five tweets if not interested in the subtleties of pillar 2 testing**)
Number of tests increased this week, as did positivity, but it's getting increasingly hard to disentangle.

In Pillar 2 there were 1,368,539 tests and 1,318,768 individuals tested (so 49,771 tests were people tested >once).

Pillar two tests (community) includes all this:
Read 16 tweets
10 Dec
Wk 27 Test and Trace - 26/11/20 to 02/12/20

Performance continues to get better as we come out of lockdown, but case numbers already starting to rise again across some parts of the country.

gov.uk/government/pub…
The number of people being tested has dropped a little, but the number of positive cases has fallen by 13%.
But we know from both PHE surveillance and gov.uk daily data, that T&T case numbers are going to plateau and start rising again next week.
Read 17 tweets
10 Dec
This week's @PHE_uk Flu and COVID surveillance report came out earlier. Covering 30/11 - 06/12

Tl,dr: In the week we came out of lockdown, case rates and hospital admissions are already plateauing nationally and rising in some regions. 😔

gov.uk/government/sta…
As we know, the fall in cases has plateaued and may now be rising.

Lockdown only ended on 2nd December. This is really concerning. ImageImage
The plateauing is in all ages (although perhaps worth keeping an eye on 5-9y/o) Image
Read 15 tweets
10 Dec
My wife is currently getting her COVID vaccine @OUHospitals.

Feeling far more emotional about this than I had expected. #Science #VaccinesWork
And on the day that BioNTech/Pfizer publish their safety and efficacy data in @NEJM.

There's not much in medicine that can give results this stark.

nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
Oh, and apparently the vaccine comes with a whole world of chocolate bourbon biscuits while you wait.
Read 5 tweets
5 Dec
Our new short analysis in @TheLancet with @cfraserepi.

Is Test and Trace exacerbating inequalities?

Tl,dr: the more deprived somewhere is, the less likely cases and contacts are reached by Test and Trace

thelancet.com/journals/lance…
The disproportionate effects of COVID on more deprived populations are well known.

People in more deprived areas are more likely to get infected and to die.

See @PHE_uk/@ProfKevinFenton's excellent review

gov.uk/government/pub…
And the detrimental impact of social restrictions/lockdown is also greater among more vulnerable populations

See this @bmj_latest piece from @sandrogalea and colleagues:
bmj.com/content/371/bm…
Read 17 tweets
3 Dec
It's that time of the week.

Test and Trace performance figures for 19-25th Nov. Wk 26.

Tl,dr: some changes to how cases are managed, and overall as cases fall, the systems showing signs of improvement.

Summary in pic, detail in thread.

gov.uk/government/pub…
A 5% drop in the number of people getting tested this week (to 1.66m), but a 28% drop in cases.
Drawing conclusions about falling positivity rates over time is getting increasingly tricky as testing among asymptomatic people is rolled out. As have said previously, reporting symptomatic separately to asymptomatic would hugely help with understanding the data.
Read 21 tweets

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