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Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
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1 Oct, 7 tweets, 3 min read
What is happening with infection in children in Wales? Infection appears to be skyrocketing, with *very large* outbreaks in schools. In the past 3 weeks there have been *131* schools with 20+ COVID-19 cases, and many more with very significant outbreaks. 🧵
Infection rates in school age children are through the roof, and still rising. In adolescents, these seem to have hit 3% *3000/100,000* per week. That's 3% of adolescents & 1.5% of primary school age children being infected *every single week*, and increasing.
It's clear that numbers of identified cases in school age children and staff are higher than they've been during any point in the pandemic, at least since last summer when testing was expanded to everyone.
What's surprising is the silence on this on media, given the shocking level of infection spreading in children and schools in wales. In fact, the document these graphs are taken from says more than once that this doesn't mean transmission happened in schools.
I'd say these data appear to suggest that *a lot* of transmission is happening in schools and mitigations are very urgently needed to curb this, alongside quick access to vaccines among adolescents. What are the Welsh govt doing?
Unsurprisingly, there have been many hospitalisations among children in some health boards- with Swansea bay saying half of their admissions during the pandemic have been in the last 3 months. Why did we let this happen, when this was so preventable?

itv.com/news/wales/202…
surveillance data here:
www2.nphs.wales.nhs.uk/CommunitySurve…

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More from @dgurdasani1

Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
2 Oct
Not vaccinating children with vaccines that have been safely given to >14 million children is *not cautious*, when the alternate is infection. This is the real impact of delay- children dying from a preventable illness while waiting to get vaccinated.

thesun.co.uk/news/16308491/…
It's frankly so disappointing to see journalists justifying and rationalising the unjustifiable without challenge. You are also responsible for the impact on children- the preventable deaths, hospitalisations, long COVID, orphaning of children, mass educational disruption.
It might be time to take a long hard look in the mirror and think about how you've been part of the machine that let this happen. To children. Children shouldn't die of illnesses we can prevent. If you can't see that, then you probably shouldn't be reporting on this.
Read 4 tweets
Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
2 Oct
COVID-related myocarditis can be severe and tragically even fatal (unlike vaccine-related myocarditis which is typically rare and mild and hasn't cause any fatalities so far). Children do get seriously ill with COVID- here's a really heartbreaking story.

thesun.co.uk/news/16308491/…
I'm shocked at how long it's taken to decide to vaccinate adolescents & provide them access to vaccines in England. Given the mass infection children are being subjected to due to lack of mitigations in schools, this is urgent. Why isn't the govt taking protecting kids seriously?
These deaths in children are preventable. Why on earth aren't we preventing them? Yes, children don't die as often as adults, but why would we let *any* children die, when protecting them involves such basic measures (vaccines, mitigations) that so many other countries have done?
Read 5 tweets
Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
30 Sep
Our paper on vaccination of adolescents co-led with @chrischirp out today in @EditorJRSM. Our risk-benefit analysis of vaccination of adolescents show benefits *far* outweigh risks in reducing deaths, hospitalisations, long COVID at current rates 🧵
rsm.ac.uk/media/5475435/…
What did we do?
We looked at different case incidence rates - continuing for a period of 16 weeks, and looked at how many 12-17 year olds would be hospitalised, be admitted to ICU, develop long COVID or die with and without vaccination during this time in England.
What rates did we consider?
We reported main results for two rates, but also looked at everything in between.
Our main results are for two case incidences:
High: 1000/100,000/wk (current incidence in 10-19 yr olds is ~800/100,000/wk for)
Low: 50/100,000/wk (similar to April)
Read 20 tweets
Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
29 Sep
This from RCPCH indicates a complete lack of understand of basic epidemiology & public health. What's disrupting education is a system that allows infectious children to stay in class. Testing those with symptoms alone (most transmission happens before symptoms) will worsen this.
It's frankly unbelievable that such a basic fact hasn't been understood by RCPCH. This messaging is bordering on negligent, given the massive outbreaks we're seeing in schools already. Not testing asymptomatic or presymptomatic children will only make this worse.
It's not rocket science- almost every other country across the world has put in place better mitigations in schools than us, and is isolating contacts of cases. This is the only way to keep schools open- by making them safer. Keeping infected kids in classrooms is not the way.
Read 4 tweets
Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
28 Sep
And if we look at how they impacted the lives of those reporting these persistent symptoms. 2/3rds reported impact on their ability to carry out day to day activities.
These estimates are broadly in line with recent ONS self-reported estimates in this age groups and the CLoCk study. There is a lot of uncertainty around long COVID, but the evidence suggests that it does impact children & the impact is non-trivial.
The impact on staff is also shocking. Education staff consistently come up on the ONS data as one of the groups with the highest prevalence of long COVID by population after health and social care workers.
Read 6 tweets
Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
26 Sep
Or just look at the data. These 2 graphs- one of PHE data by @ProfColinDavis & the second from a random survey- the ONS- so not based on testing. How can infection rates in these groups be *higher* than anyone else in the community, rising rapidly if schools aren't driving this?
Frankly, all the data point to a very clear role of schools in transmission. Denying this means denying so much real world evidence at this point, that it's just not tenable. If only the energy spent on denial of evidence had been spent on mitigating & vaccinating kids....
I don't say this lightly, but scientists that have supported unevidenced positions saying schools don't contribute substantially to transmission are also responsible for where we are. Children being mass-infected in schools, with all the impacts of that on them & others.
Read 4 tweets

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