Thread by @chrischirp

LONG THREAD: Digging into UK Covid numbers & what they mean & what's in store...

TLDR: everything is bad and getting worse.

Except vaccines. They are a shining light - we just need to give a LOT more of them.

Read on (25 tweets!)...

CASES: Cases are climbing very fast - over 735K cases in last 2 weeks, compared to 413K the 2 weeks before that. These increases *will* mean more hospital admissions and more deaths over the coming weeks.

I'm afraid that is inevitable.

Drops in testing over Christmas & New Year, and longer times to get tests mean that most recent 5 or 6 days is a bit unreliable.

Cases & +vity show massive increases in England & NI & also steep from Scotland. Wales is mixed. Don't trust v recent plateau - could be lag.

ONS Infection survey data also show increase in Scottish and English data and a drop in Welsh data (in line with Welsh positivity data). ONS says flat in NI but also small sample size there - and we know NI opened hospitality for about 10 days before Xmas. We'll know more next wk

Pretty much every local authority in Scotland & NI increased in week to 2nd Jan (orange dots) compared to week before (grey dots). NI by a lot.

Wales, in line with its positivity data & ONS data, is much more mixed. The relentless increase seen in other nations is not happening there - BUT absolute rates of Covid are very high nonetheless.

In England again *every single* Local Authority except some in SW have increased week on week. Barking and Thurrock are at 1800 cases/100K people per week!!

Cases up in all age groups - except school age kids (both ONS & PHE data)... but now many children (still) will be back at school. (

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1347524305320603648?s=20

)

BME communities much more exposed - more likely to be key workers and in deprived areas. Lockdown doesn't nec protect them

The new Covid variant is dominant in London and SE but has worryingly reached 50% of cases in Midlands & SW. It's lowish in Scotland and v low in Wales - perhaps this is why Wales is only nation to see drops in cases.

HOSPITALS: Hospital occupancy occupancy is high in all nations. Wales and England faring much worse so far. If NI cases are to be believed their hospitalisations will go up very soon.

Critical care occupancy also very high - almost back to spring for Wales + England even though treatments different now. CRUCIAL to realise that 75% of ICU patients are under 71 yrs old (@ICNARC data) - vaccines will NOT relieve ICU pressure that much for next 2 months.

In England admissions and occupancy are at record highs and climbing steeply. As we saw from case data, things are going to keep getting worse. First lockdown took 3 week to unload hospitals. Might well be longer this time :-(

Hospital admissions are climbing steeply in ALL REGIONS. This is NOT just a London or SE problem.

But that said, London is in major trouble - no wonder @SadiqKhan called a London wide criticial emergency today. theguardian.com/world/2021/jan…

ICU admissions for Covid *far* outstrips previous winters' flu admissions. London is making more beds BUT does NOT have more staff.

What happens as the NHS in London gets overwhelmed (it's a question of when not if). Can other regions take up the strain? What sorts of difficult decisions will doctors face? Who will support them to make them? Who will support families on the other side of them?

DEATHS: UK reported 1,325 deaths today - the highest ever. There were 41.5K deaths in wave 1. Since Sept we've had over 38K deaths.

We will exceed wave 1 total within a week.

The numbers will keep climbing for at least 2-3 wks. They will be people infected over Xmas period.

VACCINATION: the good news is that vaccination is well under way. We have vaccinated over 300K people a week over last few weeks BUT to get 2 million a week need to increase this 7-fold.

A big ask but CRITICALLY IMPORTANT as you'll see...

... since vulnerable people are getting infected more and more. Not just from PHE age data, but also from outbreaks in care homes which shot up last over Christmas week.

We need to protect them.

The other thing about vaccination -> vaccinating over 75s *will* prevent illness and death but unlikely to stop spread. Because a) these vaccines might not stop spread at all in anyone and b) it's not over 75s who are generally infecting other people.

We need much better vax data: who was offered vaccine and who declined? Where is uptake poorer? We need regional, ethnic, age and deprivation breakdown. We need to know how much vaccine is discarded each day thru' missed appts so we can improve this.

We also need govt to start collecting and reporting *impact* of vaccination: so cases, hospitalisations and deaths by age group, demographics and *importantly* by whether someone is vaccinated or not and number of doses received.

Lockdown might struggle to contain Covid, esp in regions where new variant is higher. Schools are fuller than before, nurseries are open, we have bubbles now, pavements are busier... We cannot assume that lockdown will be enough.

I did a thread on lockdown and what might make it more effective yesterday:

https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1347189193575985156?s=20

@ScienceShared also wrote a great article about it herehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/08/lockdowns-workers-restrictions-self-isolate

We need these measures

There are SOME signes that London, SE and East are plateauing - from ONS & KCL Zoe app. BUT this is before (some) kids went to school, & many more to nursery. Before many went back to work this week.
And flat is NOT enough - eg London cannot cope with 800+ admissions every day.

Things are bleak and getting bleaker. Do everything you can do to protect yourself and your community.

Lobby MPs to support isolation financially and practically for those who need it - particularly key workers.

Lobby MPs for transparency on vaccination schedule.

/END

PS thank you to @jburnmurdoch and Bob Hawkins for their charts! (Bob did all the LA ones and John did the pink one obv).