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

[AtW]

""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

[Whorty]

You have to remember as well that when it started the first ones to end up in hospital and dead were the elderly and vulnerable (or to reference ZiggyStroney, they were going to die anyway).
Since those numbers have been reduced the hospitalisations are coming from the younger and healthier end of the population.
In theory, healthier people should be more capable of surviving the milder variant without hospitalisation.

Absolutely .... demographics of those ill now is almost certainly different and those getting most ill are the unvaccinated.

[Whorty]

Not here it hasn't. And hospitals have not been formally reporting an emergency status (I forget the proper terminology) across the nation until the last week or two. It seems this is largely due to staff issues not an increase in cases but the net result is the same - hospitals cannot provide critical care reliably right now. That is a real worry that the NHS is teetering.

edit: "critical incidents". up to 24 declared now.

Been like it at Salisbury hospital and RUH in Bath for months.

Mate had an emergency in Harlow area about 2 months ago, his wife called 999 and they suggested she take him in as would be faster than ambulance due to ambulances stacked at A&E.

So may not be in your area, but not restricted to where I live either.

[WTFH]

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ shows a somewhat worrying visual correlation between cases and hospitalisations since mid December. But so far, deaths are not showing the same up-trend. To my eye we might be just starting to see an up-tick but it's far too uncertain.

Next week is when the numbers will start to climb as the Christmas/New Year mixing kicks in.

[d000hg]

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ shows a somewhat worrying visual correlation between cases and hospitalisations since mid December. But so far, deaths are not showing the same up-trend. To my eye we might be just starting to see an up-tick but it's far too uncertain.

[WTFH]

Question ... I can't be bothered to look it up myself.

In first and subsequent peaks, how many
- were testing positive per week
- in hospital
- died
- How long were they hospitalised for?

Seems now we have higher infections but much, much lower hospitalisations and death as a %

Also sounds like those in hospital stay much less time, and need much less critical care.

So, looking past the numbers, the story isn't as bad as it seems (but as we know with this, things can change quickly and the story is always behind the curve of reality).

You have to remember as well that when it started the first ones to end up in hospital and dead were the elderly and vulnerable (or to reference ZiggyStroney, they were going to die anyway).
Since those numbers have been reduced the hospitalisations are coming from the younger and healthier end of the population.
In theory, healthier people should be more capable of surviving the milder variant without hospitalisation.

[d000hg]

Been like this for months, not a recent thing. And the reason is, as I was told by an ambulance driver, is because the time it takes to sanitise the space for the ambulance to roll in the next patient. So we have ambulances sitting in queues at hospitals that can't get out to the next emergency as their last patient is still in the back.

So yes ... covid related .... but not because of the recent ride in infections (although staff shortages will now make this situation worse).

Not here it hasn't. And hospitals have not been formally reporting an emergency status (I forget the proper terminology) across the nation until the last week or two. It seems this is largely due to staff issues not an increase in cases but the net result is the same - hospitals cannot provide critical care reliably right now. That is a real worry that the NHS is teetering.

edit: "critical incidents". up to 24 declared now.

[Whorty]

Question ... I can't be bothered to look it up myself.

In first and subsequent peaks, how many
- were testing positive per week
- in hospital
- died
- How long were they hospitalised for?

Seems now we have higher infections but much, much lower hospitalisations and death as a %

Also sounds like those in hospital stay much less time, and need much less critical care.

So, looking past the numbers, the story isn't as bad as it seems (but as we know with this, things can change quickly and the story is always behind the curve of reality).

[Whorty]

It's pretty easy (for those in charge) to determine people who arrived to hospital with Covid and people who already were in hospital and later tested positive for Covid.

My understanding is that published numbers are the former.

So you didn't bother to read the article I linked to the other day?

[Whorty]

I'm pretty sure someone has already explained we need to look at "because of Covid" and "with Covid" carefully. It's spread so far, it seems a lot of people have it coincidentally - or catch it at hospital. Making things even harder to analyse.

Hospitalisations DO seem to have started rising and given the incredible velocity of the trend in cases, this is the moment we find out if we're screwed or not. One fear of "wait and see" was by the time things are bad enough you lockdown, you still have another 2 weeks of it getting worse.

Squeaky bums. We've already heard locally that people are being told it will be quicker to drive your spouse to A&E with stroke/heart attack symptoms than wait for an ambulance. If hospitals can't provide critical services, it really hits the fan.

Been like this for months, not a recent thing. And the reason is, as I was told by an ambulance driver, is because the time it takes to sanitise the space for the ambulance to roll in the next patient. So we have ambulances sitting in queues at hospitals that can't get out to the next emergency as their last patient is still in the back.

So yes ... covid related .... but not because of the recent ride in infections (although staff shortages will now make this situation worse).