Case ballooned in secondary school age children after a blip on school opening, and after a slight dip (?) now up again
Primary children appeared to continue summer trend upwards, with small school re-entry blip. Now maybe oscillating or up?
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This trend is matched by school ages in the @ONS population sampling data
Huge prevalence last week in secondary school age (>8%!), and less than half of this in primary school age
Remember we've been saying for 18m young children are different to older children?
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What's particularly interesting is via @ONS there is very little sign of spill-over from teenagers into older ages (small lift in the 35-49yo?), in spite of more suggestion of this in case data (? increased testing)
Vaccines holding up well - let's hope this continues!
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Now it gets a bit weird. With all these children infected what's happening with hospitalisations?
Not much!
Lowest rates since before "freedom day" for <5s, and after falling on school opening (?) back up to average summer levels for school age (6-17y) and flat
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And just for some context on these rates of admissions, here is what RSV is doing to the <5s compared to #COVID19
On the frontline in ED, #COVID19 fortunately still isn't making a dent on what we see in hospital for kids
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I get asked about PIMS-TS/MIS-C and sadly we don't have current surveillance data - however I can report we are seeing a small trickle of cases, WAY below previous peaks, despite much higher community covid numbers
Same reported in US and Europe - no current explanation
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Summary:
-Cases WAY up in teens
-Little spill over to parents
-Cases remain surprisingly low in primary children
-Hospitalisations low
-PIMS-TS/MIS-C surprisingly low
If anyone has explanations for the weird parts I'd love to hear them!
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The rationale behind this is that some have postulated PASC could be due to viral persistence - SARS-CoV-2 hanging around when it should have been cleared
Anti-virals might help clear the virus and resolve symptoms
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The evidence base behind this theory is far from clear, but given the general mess of evidence in the field this seemed like a reasonable trial
It could also serve as possible therapeutic diagnosis (if it works, it gives evidence towards the possible cause)
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