DOOM: "Omicron Covid cases ‘doubling every two to three days’ in UK"

[jamesbrown]

No changes for variants as far as I'm aware. Some companies have said they could do it (e.g., within 100 days for Pfizer) if it were necessary, but I'm not sure it has really proven necessary yet and there are obvious trade-offs w/r to production and saleability (would you really want the "old" one, even if it afforded reasonable protection?). As to whether they are actively working on them, I think so, but that is different from them reaching production. I think there is also work underway on more generally applicable vaccines (i.e., "one to rule them all"), so the work is towards generalisation as well as specialisation, I think. You can take this fwiw - just following it with a passing interest, no expertise.

[d000hg]

So here's a question are the vaccines all in current use still the 1.0 versions developed against Covid Classic (Alpha?) Every time there's a new variant "is the vaccine effective" is the hot question and we know the vaccine is very good against Kent/Delta and somewhat less so against Omicron ("good enough" perhaps an accurate assessment)

We've been told that vaccines can be updated to new variants very quickly, using the plug-n-play analogy, but has this yet happened? Is the AZ/Pfizer jab you get today the exact same stuff you did when they first launched?

[d000hg]

It does appear things are not getting worse at least but with daily deaths in the 300s that's pretty bad, and deaths may yet to peak. Remember when hundreds dying every day was considered a really bad thing?

[WTFH]

109k infections, hospitalisations seems to be slowing down...

Past the peak or not?

Past peak of testing.
Hospitalisations slowing down would be a positive if there were beds and staff available to deal with them, I suspect some people are finding that they are being turned away or referred to their GP.

[AtW]

109k infections, hospitalisations seems to be slowing down...

Past the peak or not?

[SueEllen]

Test criteria changed now, it's not like for like anymore insofar as infections are concerned

That's ignoring the tests that have never been processed....

[SueEllen]

One problem with this is all the private hospitals I live near or go pass have recruitment banners advertising for staff.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/...-omicron-surge
Hospitals in England will be able to use private hospitals and staff under a deal with the NHS to maintain services as Omicron cases surge, avoiding delays in treatment for patients with illnesses such as cancer.

The move comes as hospitals have also been told to find extra beds in gyms and education centres owing to rising numbers of Covid patients.

The three-month agreement means private healthcare staff and facilities will be on standby to support the NHS if they need it and to maintain services for patients that can be referred including some of those waiting for cancer surgery.

[AtW]

The Christmas figures are starting to come through and based on the data it looks like R=3.8 is where we're heading (2 more weeks until the next data set is officially released)

Test criteria changed now, it's not like for like anymore insofar as infections are concerned

[WTFH]

The Christmas figures are starting to come through and based on the data it looks like R=3.8 is where we're heading (2 more weeks until the next data set is officially released)

[Whorty]

""Nearly 40% of Covid hospital cases in England now patients primarily being treated for something else, latest figures show

NHS England has this morning published its latest “primary diagnosis” supplement. This is a dataset that shows how many of the daily Covid hospital cases are patients being treated in hospital for Covid, and how many are patients with Covid being treated primary for something else.

The hospital figures that are published daily do not make this distinction

The latest figure is for Tuesday 4 January and it shows that in England 13,045 patients were in hospital with Covid on that day, but only 8,200 for Covid. That means only 63% of Covid cases were in hospital primary because of Covid.

This figures has been drifting down. The equivalent figure for the previous Tuesday, when total Covid cases were 8,321, was 67%, and the Tuesday before that, when overall cases were 6,245, 71% of them were people being treated primary for Covid. At the start of December the figure was 74%.

As PA Media reports, the number of patients being treated primarily for Covid rose from 5,578 on 28 December to 8,200 a week later (a jump of 47%), while those with Covid but being treated primarily for something else rose from 2,743 to 4,845 (a jump of 77%).

The figures cover acute hospital admissions only"

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...latest-updates

Well done, you got there in the end. Give yourself a gold star