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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Vinay points correctly to the bias prone endpoint of self reported URTI symptoms and implies the entire difference between groups could be due to “the placebo effect”
The problem is, this is almost
certainly not a result of placebo
It’s detection or ascertainment bias
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Vinay describes as much in his piece, when he mentions different interpretations of vague symptoms between people with or without masks depending on their beliefs
Wear a mask and wake up tired? Probably nothing
Not been wearing a mask? Could be the start of something…
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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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