Heading into winTier ..... the one we hoped it would be over before...

[dancemom]

New thread Tierers ...

• 3,117 new cases of COVID-19 reported
• 29,558 new tests for COVID-19 that reported results
◦ 11.3% of these were positive
• 6 new reported death(s) of people who have tested positive
• 38 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 541 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 4,363,074* people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, 3,978,208 have received their second dose, and 2,200,172 have received a third dose or booster.
*Due to a refresh of data yesterday, Public Health Scotland have now been able to identify a number of duplicates in the data which were previously reported as separate vaccination events. This has resulted in a drop in reported Dose 1 vaccinations.

Thanks dancemom!

So, listening to NS earlier, she said that about 27% of Scottish cases were now thought to be omicron. So today that'll be 850 ish (of which 100ish were properly sequenced and confirmed as such). On Friday, about 15% of cases were thought to be omicron. There was a bit of a blip in Fridays numbers, but using the 7 day average, it was about 3700 cases, so about 550 omicron (15%). More like 750 if you use the actual 5k case count.

But if omicron is supposed to be so transmissible, and doubling every 2 or 3 days, why only the relatively small rise 550 to 850 over 4 days? I'm not saying it's not happening, or that there's not going to be a huge wave or anything, but the numbers to date don't seem to be following the narrative? What am I missing?

I think I may have an explanation from another thread... That the number of tests has massively decreased between Friday and now, so today's "true" case number and therefore omicron number is actually much higher.

Now, what could have happened on Friday leading to a disincentive to test over the weekend...? Oh - maybe the requirement for everyone to isolate for 10 days as a household contact of a positive case, regardless of covid/ vaccine status. In the run up to Christmas... Who'd have thought it?!

Thanks @dancemom
This is going to be interesting now to see what the difference is in case numbers snd hospitalisation between England and Scotland in a couple weeks time.

I don't understand. Cases went up a bit and now are going down again.

How does that fit with all the new rules?

@Cismyfatarse it's a bit of a unknown......testing is showing to have dropped off since they introduced the 10 day isolation for whole household numbers have dropped off!

Basically people are avoiding going for them as its close to Christmas and assuming because they will be forced to stay at home which particularly effects the self employed!

Yes, I think the lower testing is part of the issue. I also think we'll start to see higher numbers once omicron gets to be the dominant variant. At the moment it's spreading, but still at relatively low infection numbers compared to delta, so there doesn't seem to be any overall increase in case numbers of "covid" (combined with lower testing). Once it's basically all omicron, if it does "have an R approaching 4" (I have no idea how they know that!) I would think we would start to see faster rises in case numbers, as everyone will be passing on omicron (to approximately 4 other people), rather than most people passing on delta (to approximately 1 other person, as at present).

• 5,155 new cases of COVID-19 reported
• 61,011 new tests for COVID-19 that reported results
◦ 9.1% of these were positive
• 22 new reported death(s) of people who have tested positive
• 38 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 544 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 4,364,802 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, 3,981,180 have received their second dose, and 2,254,406 have received a third dose or booster.

Ah, well that scuppers my lower testing theory! That's looooaaads of tests... And a lower % positive than the past few days as a result. I'm totally confused as to what's happening

It sure is a lot of tests. Highest ever?

Back of an envelope guesstimate of number of cases:

Say, we're at a third of cases being omicron now. That's 1,700 in the last 24 hours of reporting. + 3,400 delta.

If omicron doubles every 2- 3 days that 3,400 cases ish on Friday

Plus the delta.

Hmmm. I can't figure out what the delta cases will be doing. Will they be completely replaced by omicron? Will they coexist? If only I had some slides...

This is what I've been wondering @mibbelucieachwell. Is omicron replacing delta? Will they live side by side? If omicron is milder (sshhh) would it replacing delta be a good thing? So many questions.

I'd like to know too! My feeling is that as having had delta doesn't seem to provide much immunity against Omicron (and vice versa?) they will both have their own niche. Obv Omicron will be more prevalent in the population, but hopefully once you've had that you WILL have immunity so may then decline, whereas delta will just pootle along doing it's stuff.

• 5,951 new cases of COVID-19 reported
• 60,162 new tests for COVID-19 that reported results
◦ 10.8% of these were positive
• 18 new reported death(s) of people who have tested positive
• 34 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 531 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 4,366,439 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, 3,983,975 have received their second dose, and 2,313,843 have received a third dose or booster.

I know it's early days, but fingers crossed the higher numbers don't seem to be translating into higher hospital numbers yet.

So there are almost 250 less people in hospital than a month ago and were having all this panic

Yeah, I'm struggling to get my head around this tbh. I mean, I know we're supposed to wait a couple of weeks for people to get ill (even though average incubation time is actually much shorter I think), but it's been a couple of weeks and hospitalisation numbers have gone steadily down while 'case' numbers have climbed. Shouldn't something be apparent by now? It is hard to get on board with all the doom saying and 'inevitable disaster' type talk when there is literally nothing thus far to suggest that higher cases even matter. Maybe the high level of immunity in the community (and massive booster vaccine drives) are actually doing a decent job of protecting against serious illness?

I think it will still be another week or two before we can really comment on hospitalisation rates because although the first cases appeared a few weeks ago , numbers were then so low that they wouldn't affect the hospital numbers yet

In addition to raw hospital admissions, length of stay might be shorter which would also help

Fingers crossed

It's all linked - higher infection levels mean staff working in NHS will be off leaving departments and wards short resulting in delays and cancellations.
Still too soon to know how higher numbers of infections are leading to hospital transmissions as it's typically about 10 to 14 days after being infected that hospitalisation is required.
Grim numbers.

@ecceromani

So there are almost 250 less people in hospital than a month ago and were having all this panic

I think this all the time!

But if people are only becoming infected in significant numbers over the last few days (with Omicron) then hospital numbers won't start to track up again for, what, a week or two yet?

I think January is going to be a big old pile of shit.

January is always a big old pile of shit though.

I don't know. I think there will be an increase in hospitalisations, but I can't see it being worse than, say August/ Sept, which was bad, but not unmanageable (though I know there are other things going round in winter which may make the timing worse). And we're starting at a lower hospitalisation point, with the most vulnerable and many of the less vulnerable recently boosted.

I'm more worried about everyone being off isolating at once. Not just healthcare, but everyone involved in running services, deliveries, utility providers, transport etc. I think that could get bad very quickly if we can't get stuff (or people) to where it needs to be quickly. I wonder if they'll stop the isolation requirement soon? Obviously if you're ill you stay at home/ in bed, but if you're not, either at all, or a couple of days feeling grim, then back to normal, why treat this differently than any other illness, if it doesn't prove disastrous to the NHS if loads of (vaccinated and previously infected) people are infected at the same time.

10 days from onset of symptoms/testing positive seems excessive. Especially for children.

Absolutely, the rules rather than COVID per se are in real danger of crashing various services if they're not revised. It should really be treated as any other illness at this point, perhaps asking people to quarantine for the time that they are actually symptomatic as this is the period when you're generally most infectious. All of this '10 days just in case' stuff is going to cause more harm than good and is really just a hang over to the days when people believed it might be possible to stop spread.

@BlameItOnTheBlackStar

But if people are only becoming infected in significant numbers over the last few days (with Omicron) then hospital numbers won't start to track up again for, what, a week or two yet?

I think January is going to be a big old pile of shit.

Yes and then they will go up and the majority will be people in for other things who are also positive but that won't be the lines we'll be fed......🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱