I’ve been thinking about the PHE data on infections, hospitalisations and deaths from test positive Delta cases (see left) v today’s vaccine data (R- h/t @HugoGye )
The pool of totally unvaccinated people is 25-26 million.
The pool of 1-dosed is 11.7 million - a chunk of which will be within 21 days of vaccination.
The pool of 2-dosed is just short of 30 million. But a good chunk still within 14 days of second dose.
So the cohort with SOME vaccination is markedly bigger than those with NO dose.
🦠 Yet you can see that the unvaccinated outpaces the vaccinated when it comes to cases.
🏥 & hospitalisations (even if not by as much as one might have hoped, but time to build immunity could change that picture in the next 6 weeks)
⚰️& deaths - but not by a lot, except 2-dose
I want to get over three things.
1/. The vaccinations are having a positive effect (but we need vaccine specific data to be more sure about which vaccine is providing best protection.
2/. The more people vaccinated results in a sort of compound interest of benefit if transmission reduced . More data would be welcome but it looks promising to me.
3/. We don’t yet know the extent to which NPIs in older groups are preserving better outcomes. More data needed
The Press conference today has some useful slides from @CMO_England
Vaccination data updated to today.
When it comes to protection against SYMPTOMATIC CASES (NB NOT against INFECTION or TRANSMISSION ) you can see the benefit
Esp 2-dose
But I do think it is time we got vaccine specific update as these are aggregate data
Some of us may do well to be more cautious than others.
It is LIKELY that reduced infection also means reduced transmission due to reduced viral loads but we do not know how this will work with the DELTA variant.
When it comes to HOSPITALISATIONS the reduction in hospitalisation is clear even with 1-dose but especially with 2-dose.
But we need vaccine specific data in case high performance from one vaccine is hiding poorer performance from another.
I may have missed it but I did not see an equivalent slide for deaths.
Why? Maybe bigger numbers will provide bigger statistical differences than we are seeing in my earlier tweet.
It is early days for DELTA.
The contrast in hospital admissions in the over 65 year olds v under 65 year olds is striking (left to the end of Jan) Right for May -June
Reversed
BUT it is early days for Delta that really only started clear increase in the last two months and more recently in older groups
We would be mad to ignore what has happened in the NW.
The Region is further ahead than other Regions and acts as a canary in the Coal-mine.
It is clear the trend is following elsewhere.
The dark brown and beige has been growing pretty fast
In my own area (Cheltenham, Gloucestershire - SW) it has gone from 0.1% positivity less than 3 weeks ago to 1.8-1.9% a couple of days ago. An 18 fold increase.
NW merely acts as the canary in the coal-mine for hospitalisations too.
All areas are up and the current measure are insufficient to hold back case growth.
Indeed there has been some relaxation for weddings, funerals and some other events.
Expect it all to rise
Indeed @CMO_England was at pains to spell out that we should expect cases and hospitalisations and deaths to continue to rise.
Again.
They are trying to sell that we should “live with it” rather than really work hard to crush it to gift us more freedoms not that much later
The focus of all of us should be in the fact that the current measures are not enough to stop the pretty fast growth of DELTA cases and hospitalisations. Deaths lag.
That gives us a clue, given vaccines are clearly having a positive effect, how powerful this variant is
Meanwhile our PM waffles, stutters, and makes little sense.
As SAGE points out, 187 admissions is 4 doublings away from Apr 2020 peak and less than 5 from Jan 2021 peak.
At 9 day doubling, that's *5 to 7* weeks from now - just after new July step 4 date.
Johnson Brilliance
“The next ten days are mostly locked in from recent case rises. That means in 10 days we will likely see over 250 hospital admissions a day (using 4% relationship as approx estimate).”
Just when you think you’ve got it beat, Covid-19 somehow comes back stronger. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger but without the charm this Terminator of a virus has an “I’ll be back” menace that risks undoing all the hard work of the UK’s stunning vaccine rollout huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/will-joh…
Fluffing his lines, the PM referred to “the adults of this company” (he meant “country”) and then wrongly declared the new unlocking date was July 29th (correcting it later to July 19th).
Polling shows most of the public are relaxed about a delay, but Johnson is acutely aware that the 24% who are unhappy include several of his own backbenchers, and it showed
What a surprise. Daniel Kawczynski (who is now trying to play the victim, claiming bullying!) demonstrated a complete lack of insight into his conduct, according to the official report.
He claimed one of the complainants was “a member of the snowflake generation” used language that was extreme, but not profane and appeared to be under the influence of alcohol in one of the conversations.
The complainants also said he lied in a WhatsApp group message about the incidents.