Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
Sep 9, 2021 11 tweets 4 min read Read on X
THREAD on Scotland, cases, schools and hospitals:

TLDR: cases *and* hospitalisations in kids are much much higher than they've ever been.

13% of children are off school (for any reason).

England likely to follow suit... Protect schools. 1/7
Schools in Scotland were back by 19 Aug. Scotland moved to its final level of opening on 9 Aug.

Cases in 15-19 year olds shot up week after 9th & carried on increasing after 19th. Most recent week has seen a fall.

Cases 2x previous peak in July and 6x high than Jan peak. 2/7
Of course, many 15-19 year olds are not in school tho.
Looking at Under 15s, we see rise in cases in summer term, drop over holidays and then they have shot up this term. 5x higher than July peak. Last week plateaued... 3/7
Why is this? Unclear, but school absences (Whether Covid or something else) have gone up too - from 5% at beginning of term to about 13% of pupils now. That's a lot.

Are parents keeping kids home when they hear of an outbreak (which would be counted as non covid reason)? 4/7
And what are the consequences? In the mostly unvaxxed under 18s, hospital admissions with Covid have shot up too and almost 2x higher than July peak and almost 3x higher than Jan peak. 5/7
When cases in kids go up, so do admissions. Yes, it's rarer than for adults, but let's not pretend that high cases in kids are consequence free.

England has also gone back to school at high child admission rates but with fewer mitigations in place than Scotland. 6/7
I think we urgently need to make schools safer (masks, ventilation, testing, bubbles, distancing), roll out vaccinations to all 12-15 year olds and get community rates down (best way to protect children). 7/7
PS this is specimen date data (ie day of test) so the most recent week for cases will be an underestimate. So 15-19 yr old drop less steep and 0-14 likely slight rise
PPS about 25% of children were not in school in Scotland by the end of term in June 2021. But note that that was when we were isolating contacts of cases in school - that isn't happening any more.
These are the case charts (7 day rolling average) with most recent 2 days removed to account for lags in test results.
PPPS H/T to @TigressEllie & @jneill for highlighting the high numbers of children in Scotland being admitted

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Prof. Christina Pagel

Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @chrischirp

Jul 23
THREAD:
I wrote about Baroness Hallett's Inquiry Module 1 report for @bmj_latest .

She found that there was *never* a plan to keep a pandemic death toll down - I discuss this and what it means going foward.

Main points below: 1/14 Image
The headline most seen is that the UK planned for the wrong pandemic.

While it is true that was far too narrow a focus on a flu pandemic, that is not the most telling bit.

To me the most telling bit, is what the plan did NOT do 2/14


Image
Image
Image
Image
The issue is less the wrong disease, but that there was never a plan to prevent one at all – of any disease type.

The plan was *never* about reducing the number of pandemic deaths. 3/14 Image
Read 14 tweets
Jul 19
Quick thread on current Covid situation in England and Long Covid.

I have Thoughts about the Inquiry Report published yesterday but am still trying to organise them.

TLDR: high Covid levels remain, Long Covid remains 1/11
This wave is not over. While the number of admissions with Covid remains lower than the autumn/winter waves, it has now remained highsh for several weeks.

This means there are a lot of people out there getting sick - and having their work, plans and holidays disrupted. 2/11 Image
Scottish wastewater data to 9 July shows a sharp decrease, suggesting that prevalence might be on its way down.

Obviously Scotland and England can have different dynamics, but it’s the best we’ve got as long as England refuses to analyse its own wastwater. 3/11 Image
Read 12 tweets
Jul 3
THREAD: Given tomorrow's election, I've been thinking about our nation's (poor) health, the wider determinants of health and how these have worsened and what it means for policy....

TLDR: worrying only about NHS & social care is missing the point

let's dive in... 1/25
The UK has a health problem. After steady gains in life expectancy for decades, it flatlined during the austerity years and fell for the first time this century with the Covid pandemic.

The number of people out of work for long term sickness is near record levels. 2/25
There are huge inequalities between rich & poor. Boys born in the most deprived areas can expect to die almost 10 years earlier than their peers in the least deprived areas.

Even worse, they can expect to spend 18 fewer years of their life in good health (52 vs 70 years) 3/25 Image
Read 38 tweets
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
Image
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(