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

[dancemom]

New thread Tierers ...

• 11,957 new cases of COVID-19 reported.
• 18 new reported deaths of people who have tested positive
• 19 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 1,509 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 4,439,150 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, 4,164,671 have received their second dose, and 3,456,977 have received a third dose or booster

Who is testing?!

The people I know who have caught it in the last couple of weeks are seriously vulnerable people, most younger but with underlying health problems.
They would have been amongst the first to get a booster so I think the idea that the protection from the booster doses is wearing off now seems about right.
@Pootle40 These people will test because the quicker they can get the anti viral drugs the better there chances are. some of the hospital admissions could be in order to receive the drugs I guess?

Scotland has a greater number of BA2 version of omicron compared to BA1 its not more severe but seemingly more transmissible which is why numbers are up. Only FFP2 has a reasonable effective reduction against it though and even they aren't anywhere close to 100%

@Pootle40

Who is testing?!

People that are ill. Ffs

@ScotsLass1 is the FFS directed at me? Why do people who are 'ill' need to know it's Covid.......

Because they're still required to isolate, and they might want to alert contacts who are vulnerable or who have vulnerable family members themselves.

Will they do that for the rest of their lives then?

Who knows? But the rule is we still do it now so I can't really see the point in the snark.

Isolation in Scotland has always been in guidance it's not actually legally binding so it's a guided rule rather then a legal one. It's estimated that up to 50% of people either ignore isolation or don't know they have covid (either no symptoms, mild or don't test) so it doesn't really make much of a difference.

It's personal choice to test or not personally I only do myself and DH if we are seeing very elderly. I'm not testing twice a week it's a huge plastic waste for starters and is still costing billions and its an illness which is here to stay in the community

• 14,387 new cases of COVID-19 reported.
• 41 new reported deaths of people who have tested positive
• 22 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 1,636 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 4,439,451 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, 4,165,704 have received their second dose, and 3,459,127 have received a third dose or booster

Thanks @dancemom

Argh these numbers are all creeping up
How is the trend here comparing with other uk nations, anyone know?

From Travelling Tabby - there’s a slight delay on figures because I think this goes by specimen date, not reported date.

England also starting to creep up, but nothing like the increases we're seeing. ONS also showing us as being considerably higher, although there is a bit of a lag on that.

I have an awful feeling NS is going to use this as a reason to delay dropping the masks and all the other requirements, since they're clearly all working so well

Urk. We're getting back to January levels of cases, hospitalisations and deaths quite rapidly... Is this really just boosters waning? Why aren't they speeding up the spring booster campaign for the older cohorts?! Also, I'm getting very twitchy about Tuesday's confirmation of masks etc being voluntarised (no, not a word). I just can't see NS going ahead with relaxing restrictions under these circumstances....Bum.

I think the difference in messaging on testing/ isolation across the UK is crazy. Everyone in England seems to think it's totally voluntary now, that you can isolate if you want, but you don't have to (and there seems to be an assumption that there's no free tests any more anyway). Whereas here it's assumed its "still" a legal requirement to isolate (never has been) and you should test twice a week regardless. Whereas in practice both nations say you "should" isolate for the 10 days, but can go out early with negative LFTs - but it's guidance, not law. Bizarrely, it's the most similar I think our rules have ever been (outside of full, "stay the fuck inside" lockdown) - but it feels so different!

Yes, the difference is quite stark now - and this was only up to the 4th March, so not taking the very recent rises into account. Yesterday all Scottish council areas were over 900 cases per 100k...so would all be dark purple.

It's quite strange, to have cases and hospitalisations this high, and nothing from the government. It's been so long since there's been this much radio silence!

To put a hopeful take on the numbers, if these are the 'new' omicron strain, BA.2 (or whatever they've called it), which is more transmissible than the BA.omicron, we would expect to see a narrow spike of cases. Maybe by Tuesday herself will be able to predict that we're peaking so fine to carry on with the planned lifting of restrictions on 21st. 🤞🤞🤞

I agree the SG radio silence is weird. They don't want to draw attention to the higher than English numbers?
Are waiting to see how things go?

Don't want to depress the population further when cost of living is going up so steeply and there's a horrific war in Europe. Although, they don't normally shy away from reminding us to be nice and anxious cautious.

Refreshing isn't it @TheUsualShitshow. I wonder if it's because highlighting the high cases/hospitalisations would lead to comparisons with England (as it inevitably does) and they're doing so much better despite not having all our 'caution', which then leads to discussion about whether our 'caution' is/was excessive and did more harm than good. I also think they've kind of painted themselves in a corner by pouring so much political capital into the COVID response (we're more caring, we're not reckless like Westminster etc.etc.), plus the infamous drive to 'eliminate' COVID which no-one else really thought was feasible and the bogus '5x lower' claims - lots of people bought into all that hype, are genuinely terrified of COVID (even if they're objectively low risk) and feel abandoned now that we're kind of accepting that people will get infected, but who cares?

I think the figures are made up now.......with what's going on in Ukraine I don't have the energy to give an F about Covid.

Thanks guys
The continual creep up of hospitalisations concerns me. I suppose "cases" don't matter too much if lots are mild or asymptomatic.
Are other nations having rise in hospitalisations, anyone know?

Had a quick peek at Travelling Tabby and England's hosp numbers seem to be on the up for the past three four days, which is a swing as they had been consistently falling until then.

I did see a chart suggesting that almost all of England's increased hospitalisations are incidentals (i.e. with COVID rather than because of COVID) because of the sheer numbers of cases. They're going up together rather than there being a lag so this makes sense, especially if more NHS services are starting to open up to deal with the back log. With a bit of luck it's the same story in Scotland, although I haven't seen recent with/because of data for up here.

Heard someone from the NHS saying similar on Radio Scotland earlier; that the age of people in hospital is increasing, many of them come in for other things then turns out they have Covid, so they're in for longer, and so on and on.

• 13,220 new cases of COVID-19 reported.
• 22 new reported deaths of people who have tested positive
• 23 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 1,663 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 4,439,695 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, 4,166,614 have received their second dose, and 3,461,076 have received a third dose or booster