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Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
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17 Oct, 7 tweets, 3 min read
THREAD: Some numbers on Covid and kids since 1 Sept 2020.

For 5-14 yr old kids:
Whole of Autumn term (rise of Alpha) through to spring: 239K confirmed cases.
Summer term starts low, then Delta. April - August another 285K cases.
Since 1 Sept, 336K cases *so far*. 1/7
Case ascertainment improved in March with regular testing for school kids - but even compared to summer term, numbers this term are *far higher*.

ONS infection survey (no testing bias) reported that prevalence in 2nd-ry school kids now more than 2x higher than winter peak . 2/7
What will burden of Long Covid be in children infected since summer?
ONS estimated that in 4 weeks to 2 May, 23K children ages 2-16 had persistent symptoms from Covid caught at least 12 weeks before - ie infections before mid Feb 2021.
(June dataset: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…) 3/7
By the latest Oct report, which covers 4 weeks to 5 September 2021, that estimate increased to 29K children aged 2-16 - reflecting infections up to mid June 2021.

Some cases from May will have resolved, but many more have started.

But since *mid June* cases have soared... 4/7
The Long Covid impact from the 600,000 (!) confirmed cases in 5-14 yrs since mid June 2021 *has not yet been counted*.

Pesistent symptoms 12 weeks out from infection from this term (since 1 Sept) will *not* start to show up in ONS data until late Dec/Early Jan 2022. 5/7
Even allowing for better case ascertainment and even if you assume ONS overestimates Long Covid, the huge number of cases over past 4 months will result in thousands more Long Covid cases in children.

And this term is not even half way through yet. 6/7
The other health impact of cases on children is that some children will need hospital for Covid.

We do see sustained high (for kids) hospital admissions this summer & they are rising.

Even ignoring transmission to adults or educational disruption, cases have consequences. 7/7

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More from @chrischirp

Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
19 Oct
Two things stand out to me from this chart:

1. The SW is accelerating much faster than anywhere else
2. London rates are almost half those everywhere else.

1. could be driven by the testing scandal but I have no idea what is driving the lower rates in London! and... 1/2 Image
... it's not just testing behaviours!
Positivity rates in SW are also climbing steeply (*before the scandal came out late last week).

Meanwhile positivity rates in London are *also* lower than everywhere else, so it's not just lack of testing 2/2 Image
PS the lower rates in London are seen across the whole age range. Image
Read 4 tweets
Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
16 Oct
1.THREAD on Covid, children, failure, bafflement and anger.

TLDR: English policy has failed children, and then everyone else, I am baffled why people aren't angrier. I am angry.

23 tweet rant.
2. By the time schools broke up in July, cases in children were incredibly high, there was mass education disruption and we were going through a massive delta surge (aided by the Euros).
3. US, Canada, France & Israel were already vaccinating 12-17 year olds to protect them from Covid *and* to protect their education in the autumn.

From June onwards, data was firming up, mainly from USA, about the v low risk of the vaccine & higher risks of Covid
Read 23 tweets
Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
14 Oct
VARIANTS: Everyone knows that Delta is the dominant variant in the UK (almost 100% of cases).

But Delta has continued to mutate & there are several subtypes in the UK (all start with AY).

The most common is called AY.4 - almost 80% of sequenced cases in UK are this type 1/6
So far no Delta subtype has seemed to have had much of an advantage over the others & non-Delta variants aren't getting anywhere
news.sky.com/story/covid-19……

But AY.4 has developed a new mutation (S:Y145H) & that variation (AY.4+S:Y145H) has been growing here since July 2/6
It was spotted by @CorneliusRoemer and he suggested giving it its own designation: AY.4.2 (meaning it becomes an official subsubtype of Delta subtype AY.4).

This designation has recently been accepted github.com/cov-lineages/p…… 3/6
Read 7 tweets
Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
9 Oct
Nick Triggle did his version of the article @martinmckee & I wrote in the Guardian about how UK has much higher case rates (& death rates) than West & North Europe...

Of course there are different views, but here are some areas I see differently... 1/9

bbc.co.uk/news/health-58…
That Europe is doing "vaccine plus" - high vax coverage and some measures such as masks indoors, school mitigations, covid passports is the entire point- it works much better than "vaccine just" in keeping cases (and all their bad consequences) down

And...
2/9
not clear that contact rates are higher here than in Europe - contacts in Europe are SAFER because they've take additional precautions.

In fact SAGE says we are still not close to pre pandemic contact rates in England. Many do not feel able to "be normal" due to high cases. 3/9
Read 10 tweets
Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
8 Oct
Thread on Covid & UK (mainly England).

TLDR the two epidemics theme continues and the impact of summer infections on long covid is becoming evident... 1/13
On vaccination, we've started on 12-15s but roll out is slower than it was for 16-17s... and in younger age groups we are substantially behind Scotland who have been using walk in clinics for teens.2/13
For boosters, we've now given a quarter of 80+ their booster and rollout is progressing. When the programme started, 3.5m people were already elgibile for their booster - we've got a bit of work to catch up to all the eligibles as soon as we can! 3/13
Read 14 tweets
Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
8 Oct
A conversation with @adamhamdy prompted me to look at how different home nations are dealing with reinfections (people testing positive with Covid more than once, at least several weeks apart)

There are differences that will matter more over time as Covid keeps going 1/7
England only counts the *first* time someone tests positive. So if I tested positive last summer and then tested positive again now, I'd only appear in last summer's numbers.

This means England is undercounting cases (but not by much as long as reinfections are rare) 2/7
Wales *does* allow for reinfections as long as they are 6 weeks apart. So if I tested positive last summer and again today, I would count as a Covid case twice - once last year and once again this year. 3/7
Read 8 tweets

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