Genuine question about Covid/Omnicron statistics.

[Ilovemycatsomuch]

Excuse me if I'm being a bit dim here, but I'm really confused....

So news reports today say that there we're around 93000 cases of covid diagnosed in the UK in the last 24 hours. Which is obviously a big increase. News reports also say that around 4000 new omicron diagnosis' occurred in the UK in the last 24 hours.

Does that mean that 89000 of todays diagnosis' were delta? And therefore it must be delta that is rapidly increasing?

This is a genuine question. I'm not trying to cause fear or hysteria. I'm genuinely confused about this.

Can someone who knows more than me explain?!

TIA

*omicron

I assume its probably omicron responsible for the increase but today's (and probably yesterdays) cases haven't been sequenced yet

I don't think you're being dim at all... sounds really confusing.

Following with interest

Ahh yes, that makes sense. Thank you!

@SylvesterTheCat I like your username 😁

I know at my trust they cannot do variant analysis. So they test for the standard positive/negative and then the samples are shipped to a large London lab which takes a further 2-3 days for the variant result

@Largethighsbadeyes @jayde28 thank you for explaining this. It's reassuring.

The 4,000 omicron is confirmed cases or they’ve been fully sequenced. They would have been identified as positives several days ago, so they’re nothing to do with positive case numbers in the last 24 hours.

They should explain this stuff!

They don't fully sequence every PCR sample, just a %, which differs from lab to lab.

So they might have confirmed 4000 Omicron cases via sequencing but that doesn't mean there's only 4000 of them!