Thread by @chrischirp

Last COVID thread of the year!

First cases are continuing to go up everywhere and we are starting to get past the Christmas testing / reporting drops.

Worryingly, new data from ONS shows that the new variant is clearly now spreading in all regions.

The number of people being admitted to hospital with Covid-19 is shooting up too. On 29th Dec, we were only a few hundred lower than we were at April peak.

We are very likely to exceed this in a few days.

And these rising admissions are in the context of full hospitals - we are *already* at about 4,000 more Covid patients in hospital than at peak.

This is BEFORE any impact from Christmas. It's bad out there.

And, as cases rise everywhere, we are seeing hospital admissions starting to rise in all regions. London and SE still very fast, but Midlands and NE also rising faster again.

This *will* affect care. It already is in London

https://twitter.com/JujuliaGrace/status/1344642392733978624

https://twitter.com/bmj_latest/status/1344704952736821251

This is not the NHS's fault - they are facing impossible waves of demand right now, which are growing.

Please care for our docs & nurses & other NHS staff

https://twitter.com/doctor_oxford/status/1344586319536803840?s=20

What can be done? At a minimum, we need a March type national lockdown straight away.

SAGE minutes clearly think that we can't control Covid with schools open:
gov.uk/government/pub…

We need to make schools safer & support kids, parents & teachers (esp disadvantaged communities) to learn online in the meantime.

We need to start testing contacts of all new cases as they already do in Ireland and many other countries, to chase down chains of tranmissions more quickly.

We need to support people to isolate more effectively: by paying a decent wage to do so, by supporting any caring responsibilities, by providing accommodation where necessary, by checking in every day to see how people are doing

We need stronger border control and managed isolation of new arrivals.

We need to massively ramp up vaccination to at least 2 million doses a week as fast as possible.

cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19…

All of this will entail hardship and sacrifice, often by the people already worst off. The government *must* spend what it takes to extend furlough and financial support to all those affected (inc self-employed)

Finally, on this end of a pretty terrible year, please don't go to New Year's Eve parties. If you mixed over Xmas & got infected, you will be most infectious about now - even if you feel totally fine.

Stay home.

Here's hoping 2021 is *much* better.

See you on the other side!