SHORT THREAD on current state of the NHS in England:
TLDR: Ambulance response times improving, A&E improving but still bad, diagnosis and treatment waits are not good.
First - ambulance response times higher than pre-pandemic but way down on their peak - thankfully! 1/5
% of people waiting >4 hours from arrival in A&E to either admission *or* discharge is falling but higher than pre-2020.
A *bit* better than 2022.
% waiting >12 hrs *after admit decision* falling.
BUT % who need admission waiting more than 12 hrs from *arrival* is v high 2/5
However, record number of people waiting for treatment in England, >7.5 million!! One in eight of population!
We are making progress in reducing number waiting more than 18 months at least and increase activity, but waits for ops after cancellation are higher than pre-2020. 3/5
Relevant to decision to cancel some cancer time to diagnosis targets are our poor performance in both seeing people for an urgent cancer diagnosis within 2 weeks and in starting treatment within 2 months. 4/5
More generally, number of people waiting for diagnostic tests more than 6 weeks, or worse, 13 weeks, remains much higher than pre 2020.
So in total, imrpovements in the emergency areas (which you'd hope for summer!) but NHS remains very very stretched. 5/5
PS Thank you, as ever, to Bob Hawkins for pulling out the data & doing the charts!
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Covid update: bigger jump in England hospital admissions with Covid this week (40%⬆️). Also now seeing increase (28%⬆️) in number of patients in hospital primarily because of Covid.
Definitely in a wave but starting from much lower base than previous ones 1/6
Not sure how much it will take it off in Aug with holiday season (and biggest increases are in England holiday areas like the South West). There is a new Omicron variant around called EG.5.1 alongside XBB.1.16, and UKHSA estimate it's got about a 20% weekly growth advantage. 2/6
But, as @kallmemeg pointed out, we've not seen big waves in variants with growth advantage of around 20% - previously needed 50% growth advantage+ to get big wave...
3/6
THREAD: what I think is happening with Covid in England right now.
TLDR: while data is sparse & comes with lots caveats, it's all pointing to pretty low Covid prevalence right now. 1/13
Firstly let's look at hospital data. Recorded Covid admissions are lower than they've been in a LONG time.
People often doubt this data because testing has changed (there is less testing in hospitals now). And that's true - but we can dig further into the data too. 2/13
The main testing that's stopped is testing of people with no symtpoms. But if you are in hosp cos of respiratory symptoms, you do get tested! You also get tested if Covid might affect your treatment - this is likely to be true of people in ICU.
THREAD: update on how the NHS is doing across ambulances, A&E, diagnostics & treatments.
TLDR: better than last winter (worst ever) but still much worse than pre pandemic. 1/10
Ambulance response times are much faster than they were this winter which is good, but still significantly slower than there were before "freedom" day in July 2021. 2/10
A&E also better than Dec 2022 but still far higher than pre pandemic & pre summer 2021. A quarter of people still waiting longer than 4 hours.
We are currently (red line) tracking last year (orange line) - which is not a good thing! 3/10
The paper was led by @katebrown220 & specialist docs, with number crunching by @HarrisonDWilde using @BHFDataScience data on all admissions, tests etc.
We looked at all recorded first infections in kids 0-17 rys & any associated hospitalisations from Jul 2020 - March 2022. 2/15
Overall we found almost 30,000 hospital admissions, with peaks coinciding with prevalence peaks as measured by ONS infection survey.
Admissions higher since 'freedom day' & Delta and highest since Omicron. 3/15
TLDR: Disappointing uptake of Spring Booster but good news is that hospitalisations and deaths are going down and are at lowest we've seen in a while... 1/8
almost 60% of over 75s have had the Spring booster but only about a quarter of immuno-compromised. This is disappointing uptake - at equivalent time last autumn, about 80% of 75+ had been booster. 2/8
sadly disparities by ethnic minority persist, with much lower take up among minority communities.
Additionally too many people - of any age - remain unvaccinated AND primary vaccination will be withdrawn from July! So GET JABBED & GET PROTECTED! 3/8