This week's @PHE_uk COVID surveillance report's just out.
Most recent week covered is 11th-17th Jan.
Case numbers may have peaked but hospital situation remains critical & deaths continue to rise, with large regional variation.
We're not out of this yet. Please stay 💪.
🧵
For two weeks in a row there are decrease in number of cases.
It seems fairly clear that with lockdown, infection rates are declining in all regions. Importantly (compared with last week) this now includes those aged 80+.
In some regions, particularly those with high case rates in this wave, infection rates are coming down fairly quickly.
In other regions & ages, there is little shift in some age groups. For example, see age 40-60yrs in East and West Mids.
This is *despite* being under lockdown.
Also worth noting that positivity rate in pillar 1 - the percentage of PCR tests done in NHS and PHE labs that come back positive - has gone up this week.
This will, in part, be a reflection of thousands of people still being admitted to hospital + outbreaks (note age 80+).
As infection rates begin to fall, differences by deprivation in young adults, and by ethnicity remain.
Slight fall in the number of incidents in care homes reported to PHE this week, which is great news.
This goes alongside the reported fall in case rates all ages including those aged over 80yrs.
But we know that number of deaths among care home residents with COVID jumped 46% wk ending 15th Jan, with total deaths now more than each of last 2yrs.
As deaths lag 2-3 weeks behind infection, it's desperately sad that we should expect these to rise.
Step increase in incidents seen in hospitals but note scale is *one tenth* of that used in care homes chart.
To be honest, I think it's fairly remarkable how few hospital incidents are reported given the that around 1/3 of all current adult inpatients have COVID.
Increase in incidents in schools this week, especially those for children with special educational needs - those schools are more likely to have children in school.
Little change in workplace settings.
Potentially beginning to see an overall slow down in hospital admission rate.
But this actually only London, South East and East of Eng.
*Everywhere else* it is still rising.
And as mentioned earlier about rising case rates in over 80yr olds last week. Their admission rates are still rising as other ages plateau and fall.
Hopefully next week we should see their admission rates begin to fall.
And because stay can be lengthy, the number patients in hospital with COVID is still rising.
Well over double the November peak.
ICU admissions also lags behind hospital admissions, where again it's still rising everywhere except London, East of England, and South East, plus also potentially stalling in N West.
And as ever, worth remembering that ICU patients are on average, much younger.
Deaths then lag a further week and will continue to go up for at least the next week (note, most recent week will increase following delayed notifications).
And this peak's excess mortality now becoming abundantly and upsettingly clear.
An among all this, vaccination roll-out continues at a pretty incredible pace (the logistics underpinning this are fairly eye-watering).
Vaccinations should really help regarding severe infections, but transmission may still occur, and young people still end up in ICU.
(there remains no flu).
So there's hope that lockdown has meant that new infections may have peaked, but hospitals are still bursting at the seams and *thousands* are dying every day.
Vaccines provide hope, but it remains critical to follow lockdown rules and only go out if absolutely necessary.
And thankfully most people are doing just that - in fact, compliance is as high as it's ever been.
Most recent Test and Trace data, covers 31st Dec - 6th Jan.
Mixed picture this week:
- tests, cases, contacts ⬆️
- test turnaround times still not great
- taking longer to reach cases, but contact tracing performance remains fairly strong
Following dip over Christmas week, number of people tested this week back up to 2.58m - 2.15m people tested in pillar 2 (community, including both PCR and rapid lateral flow devices) and 0.43m in pillar 1 (hospitals, just PCR).
For week ending 6th Jan, there was a 21% increase in number of people testing positive to 388k, with similar percentage increases in both pillar 1 and pillar 2.
There is a suggestion that in terms of case rates, we may have turned a corner.
This is great news for every age group EXCEPT over 80+yrs where case rates look to be climbing as fast as ever in ALL regions (and 70-79yrs also in NW, SW, Mids).
Here's the overall regional data.
Cases still climbing in the NW+, as well as SW and West Mids. Falling elsewhere.
This week's test and trace data covering 24th to 30th Dec.
Case numbers and contacts rising steeply, and whilst contact tracing remains relatively consistent, some signs that the testing system may be under strain. 🧵
We know cases and positivity rates are going up. Today's PHE surveillance report (to 3rd Jan) puts the numbers into perspective, including the current unprecedented challenge facing acute services.
And as case numbers rose by 24% in most recent wk, the number of people getting tested fell by 30%.
Am not discussing detail of rapid lateral flow devices vs PCR tests here as not confident in the data, but PHE report PCR positivity now at over 16% for community testng (P2)
A huge 2.4m people were tested - up 20% on the week before. And 232k people tested positive, 33% more than last week and more than double two weeks before.
Positivity up to 9.7% from 8.8% wk before (7.9% in pillar 1, 10% in pillar 2).
Because it's Christmas eve and there's not much else to do whilst sitting in a dark room waiting for small people to go to bed, here's a quick look at today's T&T data.
Covers 10-16th Dec.
Test times much worse, contact tracing continues to improve.🧵
Any graphs this wk are from PHE report. T&T are just providing data update.
Number of people tested up 12% to 1.99m but positive tests up 58% to 174k, incl a v large 67% increase in pillar 2 (community testing, including use of lateral flow tests in those who are asymptomatic).
Big drop in performance for P2 test turnaround times.
- Regional test sites, 36% of results are provided within 24hrs of taking a test, down from 63% the week before.
- For local test sites the drop is from 51% to 22%
- Mobile test sites: from 68% to 48%