Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
Apr 30, 2021 13 tweets 5 min read Read on X
FRIDAY GOOD NEWS THREAD:
how about some positivity?

Here's a brief overview of state of Covid in UK right now.

TLDR: pretty good, couple of things to keep an eye on. 1/13
Case rates are below 50/100,000 people/week in all nations (orange), dropping from prev week (grey) and approaching levels last seen Sept 1 last year (green). 2/13
England is the flattest in terms of case rates and this is reflected regionally (orange and grey dots close together). Yorks & Humber still highest region, confirmed by the ONS infection survey too. 3/13
One thing to note is that although all positive LFD tests are now encouraged to get confirmatory PCR, about a third of cases are now positive LFD without confirmation. 4/13
Cases by age are also flat or falling which is good news. This chart is from the ONS infection survey data so is not affected by whether someone has symptoms or changes in LFD test numbers.

All good but note only covers a few days of summer term.

Case data also flat 5/13
So great news that all going in right direction - so much of a better picture compared to where we were a few months ago and also where much of the rest of the world is now.

Couple of warning things to note... (wouldn't be me without some warnings!) 6/13
Firstly, the impact of deprivation has been stark for the last 8 months - Imperial REACT study shows that if anything the disproportionate impact is larger when prevalence is lower. 7/13
Secondly, while overall vaccination is great with 62% of adults having had 1 dose and 26% 2 doses, there are (obviously) differences by age. 8/13
and these differences have also translated (naturally) into presence of antibodies (which arise either from vaccination or from previous infection).

ONS released its latest population antibody survey today. 9/13
So roughly half of people between 16 and 34 don't have any Covid antibodies, maybe 8 million people... (plus 11 million children who've not been vaccinated, although some will have antibodies through prev infection). 10/13
Having so many people with some immunity will do a great deal to slow down any spread as we open up, but might not be enough to keep R<1 (which is what SAGE is worried about after June).

Adding better contact tracing, ventilation etc could keep R<1 + continuing to vax. 11/13
Finally there are variants. These remain the biggest medium term threat to our vax programme and we need to stay on top of them here.

I did a thread on this earlier


PHE last week showed likely increase in variants, particularly in London . 12/13
That said, cases in London very low and this increase in new variant compatible cases does not seem to be increase overall case numbers so far.

So overall - pretty good news! 13/13

PS thanks to Bob Hawkins for many charts. @Kit_Yates_Maths dives into the data in more detail

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More from @chrischirp

Jun 4
As ever, I am getting lots of pushback.
Here is a compilation of the European countries I've found with recent wastewater data. Some are going up a bit, some down a bit, some are flat, none are anywhere near previous peaks.
I can't see anything here to be panic anyone. 1/3
Image
I can't find the dashboard for Spain, but others saying it is in a wave. Perhaps it is. England has just had one - the last data we had (a couple of weeks ago from Bob Hawkins) looked as if our wave had peaked.
So, I'm not seeing reason to think things are terrible here! 2/3 Image
Yes there are new variants growing right now. They are not growing faster than JN.1 grew in December and that wave did not end up as bad as feared.
Clearly it remains true that Covid is NOT a seasonal disease (unlike Flu and RSV)
3/3
Read 5 tweets
May 8
Quick thread on the Astra Zeneca (AZ) covid vaccine since it's been in the news today.

TLDR there isn't a new "smoking gun", the AZ vax was one of first and cheapest, it saved millions of lives globally, there are better vax out there now, adapted to new variants 1/9
the AZ vaccine was one of the first approved at the end of 2020, cheaper than Pfizer, and - importantly - easier to administer in lower resource settings as it didn't require super low temperatures for storage 2/9
In most countries it was first rolled out in older adults. As it was rolled out in younger adults, a *very rare*, serious, side effect was noticed - it could cause deadly blood clots

This was spotted quickly and studied. Vax monitoring did its job. 3/9 Image
Read 11 tweets
Apr 2
A short thread on why this is not a scary chart and why all the evidence suggests that there is not much Covid around right now. 1/6 Image
the above chart is recorded covid hospital admissions / reported covid cases. It is close to 100% now *because basically only hospitals can report cases since Feb 2024*

It is to do with changes in case reporting and NOT hospital testing
2/6
In fact hospital testing has been steady since the change in testing a year ago (only symptomatic patients get tested now).

The % of people PCR tested who have Covid is 4% - there is no evidence that there are loads of symptomatic people in hospital being missed. 3/6
Image
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Read 6 tweets
Dec 21, 2023
Beyond a shadow of a doubt that England is in its biggest Covid wave for well over a year now, with latest ONS infection survey results published.

I've written about it here
1/7 tinyurl.com/ru7h3m28
Image
The UKHSA have now published their modelled estimates of what percentage of English population has Covid. And as of a week ago it's high (4.3%) and rising.

Read all about it here!
2/7
It's highest in London, South East and East & in young and middle aged adults.
The main thing is it's going up and fast, so prevalence will already by significantly higher now than it was last week. 3/7
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Read 8 tweets
Nov 30, 2023
Short thread on what I said on Channel 4 news tonight.

1. Did I find Hancock a sympathetic witness?

A: I find it hard to have sympathy for someone who repeatedly claimed to have thrown protective ring around care homes, while discharging covid+ patients into them.

1/5
There were *28,000* excess deaths in care homes Apr-May 2020.

Harries thought it was "clinically reasonable" not to treat covid +ve residents in hospital. Even it was, it was NOT reasonable to return them somewhere they could infect so many other very vulnerable people. 2/5
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2. Did I think scientists bear blame for not emphasising asymptomatic transmission?

A: No, because they very clearly did advise there could be asymptomic transmission before March 2020 - sources in next tweet. 3/5
Read 5 tweets
Nov 30, 2023
Hancock: "there was no way we could allow the NHS to become overwhelmed"

Except, the NHS WAS overwhelmed

Here is what NHS staff said about that time - Pls read whole 🧵
"Heartbreaking"
"Horrific"
"It broke my soul"
"We cried, we came home exhausted. We were overwhelmed"

1/16
"Overnight we were told that all “safe working rules” were gone. There was no choice, we were forced to do it"

"It felt like a death sentence. It felt out of control"

"We were put on wards with no senior support, sometimes makeshift ... with little of the right equipment"

2/16
"Terrifying. A huge sense of duty ... but also terror. We were unprepared & ovt clearly had no plan"

"We had patients on wards on 19 litres of oxygen - this would never happen under normal circumstances - they’d have come to Intensive Care but we didn’t have the space"

3/16
Read 17 tweets

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