The reasons can be illustrated by the median ages of patients in the 3 groups affected by COVID
-patients who died (median age 83) @ONS
-hospital admissions (age 73) @ISARIC1
-ICU admissions (age 61) @ICNARC
Impact of vaccination is much slower in the younger groups
2/n
There's been evidence vaccination is impacting deaths in the older groups for some time
In hospitals there is still a lot of pressure
Today there are still as many patient in hospital as at the peak of surge 1
5/n
In ICU the numbers of ventilated are still at roughly the same as at the peak of surge 1 - despite the fact that far more patients are being managed on the wards in surge 2.
6/n
Although this is not all about ICUS ..... the ongoing pressure on ICUs is becoming widely underestimated @ICS has produced excellent infographics to illustrate this
@ICS have a detailed document 'recovery and restitution' for ICU services
They describe an increase in occupied ICU beds by
2,251 (vs Feb 2019)
Equivalent to 141 new ICUs
An approximate 70% increase
These beds did not exist last year
Nice to see this published
Working with @john_actuary from @COVID19actuary we’ve modelled impact of vaccination on
-deaths
-hospital admissions
-ICU admissions
Vaccinating just by age would have this impact on the three measures
The lag in the last two is because the groups differ.
Median ages
-deaths 83
-hospitalised 73
-ICU 61
So the cohort who might get to ICU have to wait for vaccination
If the graphs are adjusted to account for
-gp2 health/social care workers
-gp4 extremely clin vulnerable
-gp6 high risk
They look like this with lag slightly reduced (and the health service staff protected)
Vaccinating 15% of popln
-huge impact on deaths
-modest impact on ICU
Not sure altmetric is be-all & end-all but it looks like
the meta-analysis of ICU outcomes from COVID by @drrichstrong@adk300 has just become @Anaes_Journal no. 1 using that metric
Quite a feat during a pandemic while doing your day jobs
Well done🎩
Thanks @Anaes_Journal for publishing it and handling it so expertly and promptly, as usual
2/n
Unlike most papers this year it had a somewhat positive message showing how in-ICU mortality has fallen over the first months of the pandemic
- from around 60% in Jan-March
- to less than to 30% in May
An awful disease but one in which we have been making improvements