Why do we have more omicron cases than other countries?

[egglette]

Sorry if this has come up before. I saw an article earlier about omicron case numbers around Europe. Most countries seem to be in the low double figures, whereas we're approaching 5k. I also had a quick look at some foreign newspapers and it's not really headline news.

Do we test/sequence a lot more? Or do we really have that many more cases? Reminds me a bit of our general stats on cases/deaths. Seems odd that we would be doing so much worse than countries with very similar measures, populations etc. (as much as think our gov. has been exceptionally crap!).

I do remember a back that there was a correction to remove lft and per resuts for the same person, I hope they haven't gone back to double counting.

They don't double count. In fact even if you have a length of time (and negative pcrs) between infections they don't count reinfections either, which must surely be getting more then negligible by now, as more people have had it.

Anyway, I've just looked at positivity rates.
We're round about 10%, Germany is just under 20% and France is 6.7%, for example. That's an interesting difference.

@Quartz2208

Also as a travel hub more cases would have gone through Heathrow (and the likes of Amsterdam) and then fed out. The majority of our cases are in London at the moment which makes sense. Scotland had a lot of travel with COP26.

South Africa have really strict mask rules (even in the car when by yourself) so at the moment it is going to be spreading out from travel places

That is not strictly true. Yes we do have strict mask rules. Wearing one when alone in a car isn't one of them though.

I would be quite stuffed it it was the case. As covering my mouth and nose affects my other senses, and imo it is just dangerous for me to drive with a mask on.

Once in a public area getting out of the car, yes you would need to wear a mask. If you are using public transport, or the driver of said transport, you need to wear a mask.

@MargaretThursday number of tests also are due to people doing lft regularly with no symptoms and not sure all countries do this
I also know many myself included who do lft and don't bother reporting now if negTive so prob do more tests than even registered

There are a few posts re classes on here but so far the rise is in 20-29s and younger is fairly flat

@gsaoej

We are massively densely populated compared to many other places. Our school kids are stuffed into classrooms. I remember going to a state primary in the 80s. Our classrooms were much bigger with many more facilities than even the private school classrooms of today. Every inch counts now and that is no good for infection rates.

The same applies in hospital and GP waiting areas. Stuff as many people in tiny cramped unventilated spaces. Just very bad planning.

@DobbyTheHouseElk

In France you only test when you have symptoms. A PCR. They don’t use LFTs. In the UK we test twice a week on LFTs looking for asymptomatic cases. You are going to find more cases that way.

LFTs don't tell you whether it's omicron or not. It's the "proper" tests done in labs that do the sequencing.

@user1497207191 lft do detect cases with no symptoms though and then people go on to have a pcr test which then may be tested for variants , so its a knock on effect

@user1497207191 have you been to a hospital or gp lately as none are like that around here

It’s testing simple as

We test almost 5x that of our neighbours and so sequence just as many higher

Many workplaces - inc mine offer 2x weekly pcr for asymptomatic which many places don’t do and these are sequenced

We test more
We sequence more

I expect we have a lot less If all countries tested equally

I refer to tests per million population

I would say hospital admissions is a useful metric rather than number of cases or number of tests. Looks like UK aren't doing too badly.

ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Hospital+admissions&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=USA~GBR~FRA~ESP~NOR~BEL

[quote worriedatthemoment]@user1497207191 have you been to a hospital or gp lately as none are like that around here [/quote]
Yes, we go almost weekly as my OH is undergoing chemotherapy and needs regular blood tests, and other infusions. The blood test area at our local hospital is part of out-patients and the waiting area is very cramped, busy and unventilated. It's the same place he has to go for his oncologist appointments every month. He also had to go for an x-ray a couple of weeks ago and the x-ray waiting room was heaving with people.

Professor Dalgliesh stood as a UKIP candidate and made a statement saying that the NHS would collapse due to high numbers of EU immigrants. I'm not convinced his opinion is going to be measured, factual or accurate.

He discredited himself by comparing Belgium with Sweden and Florida with California claiming there was little difference between them. Population density and climate is a major difference in both comparisons. Omicron may well turn out to be a mild disease but we only have SA data to go on at the moment and the age and vaccine profile of their population is very different to ours.

Who knows whether we will have hundreds of thousands of cases a day and a health service which ceases to function at all nevermind barely, it's too soon for us to know but it's not too soon for us to act with caution until we have more information.

@egglette

Sorry if this has come up before. I saw an article earlier about omicron case numbers around Europe. Most countries seem to be in the low double figures, whereas we're approaching 5k. I also had a quick look at some foreign newspapers and it's not really headline news.

Do we test/sequence a lot more? Or do we really have that many more cases? Reminds me a bit of our general stats on cases/deaths. Seems odd that we would be doing so much worse than countries with very similar measures, populations etc. (as much as think our gov. has been exceptionally crap!).

Cos our population has high percentage of obese adults (and kids) and those people have complications from Covid