Re: New Variant Covid-19 VUI 202012/01
Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 8:28 am
If the UK needs to order - and enforce - a full schools-closed urgent-trips-outside-only lockdown now, and hope that it's not already too late.
Some commentary by one of the authors:Woodchopper wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 8:10 amhttps://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/ ... date_1.pdfUpdated data from COG-UK, as well as Pillar 2 testing data from Public Health England, now show that the frequency of the variant has grown substantially in all regions of England.
[...]
The spread of this variant is now apparent from both sequencing data from COG-UK and S gene target failure data from Pillar 2 testing (Fig U1). There is a pattern of spread in two distinct phases, involving south-east England followed by the north of England (Fig U2, U3).
I agree with you and shpalman. It doesn’t even look like the above fully took into account mass travel out of London to the regions over Christmas. (I’m assuming a lags between infection, testing, reporting analysis and publication).
Looking in from outside, from a country which has low numbers of cases and all of those originating from travellers returning (even if the quarantine isn't always perfect), yes, you need to have a proper lockdown of ~4-6 weeks, to get to zero (or close to) cases and then start track and trace of the few cases which crop up.
Maybe it would go down faster if the English lockdown were actually a proper lockdown.lpm wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 11:05 am4-6 weeks lockdown is nothing like enough to get close to zero, even for the original version. You perhaps don't appreciate how high our cases are.
For the English variant maybe 4 months is needed to get back to test & traceable levels - something like 10% reduction per week.
Indeed - currently here in Tier 4 this weekend, I can pop inside the local Costa to get a takeaway croissant and latte, kids saturday morning soccer is on (organised outdoor sport for under 18s is allowed), I can pop to the DIY store to get that shelf I've really been meaning to fit in the bathroom.
Medics are starting to see “whole wards of children” suffering from Covid for the first time during the pandemic, a senior nurse has warned.
Laura Duffell, a matron at King’s College Hospital, London, said the new strain of Covid was affecting children and younger adults with no underlying health conditions in worrying numbers.
She said: “It’s very different. That’s what makes it so much scarier for us as doctors, nurses and porters and everyone else who is working on the front line.
“We have children who are coming in. It was minimally affecting children in the first wave... we now have a whole ward of children here and I know that some of my colleagues are in the same position, where they have a whole ward of children with Covid.”
There have definitely been more cases among children:
Looks like this BBC report is the original source: https://twitter.com/bbc5live/status/134 ... 63552?s=21Woodchopper wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 1:53 pmCovid wards 'full of children' for first time in pandemic, warn nurses
https://news.yahoo.com/covid-wards-full ... 10680.html
Medics are starting to see “whole wards of children” suffering from Covid for the first time during the pandemic, a senior nurse has warned.
Laura Duffell, a matron at King’s College Hospital, London, said the new strain of Covid was affecting children and younger adults with no underlying health conditions in worrying numbers.
She said: “It’s very different. That’s what makes it so much scarier for us as doctors, nurses and porters and everyone else who is working on the front line.
“We have children who are coming in. It was minimally affecting children in the first wave... we now have a whole ward of children here and I know that some of my colleagues are in the same position, where they have a whole ward of children with Covid.”
On cases see also:Woodchopper wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:37 pmThere have definitely been more cases among children:
See the heatmap here: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details ... ame=London
See here pages 7-8 https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-i ... 2-variant/
Here page 5 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... _FINAL.pdf
Even if a small proportion of children are admitted to hospital, the large number of cases will still add up to a lot.
Would be good to see some data on hospital admissions disaggregated by age.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... cember2020
4. Age analysis of the number of people in England who had COVID-19
In the most recent week (12 to 18 December), the percentages testing positive have increased for all age groups except those aged 50 to 69 years where there are early signs of an increase, and those aged 70 years and above in whom there are early signs of a decrease. Secondary school-age children continue to have the highest percentage testing positive. Caution should be taken in over-interpreting small movements in the narrower age groups, which have wider credible intervals.
This is only up to week ending Dec 13th but hospital admission rates per 100,000 population split by age are in Figure 7 here...Woodchopper wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:37 pmWould be good to see some data on hospital admissions disaggregated by age.
In the first wave, out of every 100 people who got a positive there were probably only 1 or 2 children (did I read that Michael Gove got one for his daughter?), simply because you mostly had to be showing symptoms to get a test. (And for those 100 people there were probably 400 more who were positive but never got a test).Woodchopper wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 10:10 pmStatement by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health: https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/news-events/new ... e-covid-19
Not a big problem across the UK
Why would you expect the prevalence to be higher among teenagers and young adults in the second wave as compared to the first one? And you would have noticed if there would have been lots of children in hospital during the first wave whether or not they'd managed to get covid tests.sTeamTraen wrote: ↑Sun Jan 03, 2021 1:08 amIn the first wave, out of every 100 people who got a positive there were probably only 1 or 2 children (did I read that Michael Gove got one for his daughter?), simply because you mostly had to be showing symptoms to get a test. (And for those 100 people there were probably 400 more who were positive but never got a test).Woodchopper wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 10:10 pmStatement by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health: https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/news-events/new ... e-covid-19
Not a big problem across the UK
In the second wave I would expect actual prevalence to be higher among, if not small kids, then certainly teenagers and young adults. They take more risks generally, and an awful lot of over-60s are just not going out thank you very much.
So I suspect you could have a lot more kids on wards just from the distribution, without the virus needing to have become more infectious or more harmful. As Stephen Senn says, "every statistician should always ask ‘how did I get to see what I see?'".
In the UK schools were closed and all face-to-face teaching at universities was stopped during first wave. Organised youth sport was also stopped.
Yes, the larger number of cases among children could be due to different behaviour, or could be due to the variant being more transmissible.bob sterman wrote: ↑Sun Jan 03, 2021 8:59 amIn the UK schools were closed and all face-to-face teaching at universities was stopped during first wave. Organised youth sport was also stopped.