Has the Indian variant peaked?

[JoM]

Our neighbour is a critical care nurse with Sandwell and West Birmingham Trust and she’s been keeping us all updated as to the situation in the area. It’s all getting very concerning again. This is her WhatsApp message from this morning:

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I’m sure a lot of you would like to be updated. Most of my colleagues within my Midlands team are emailing out updates today stating Covid admissions are increasing in Critical Care (Intensive Care). I am seeing this in my hospitals too. Some of those have been vaccinated as well. Please stay safe and take care everyone, this is not over yet.
Hopefully the vaccinations will reduce admissions but the hospitals are already full dealing with the backlog.
The admissions are a mixture from 20s to 60s which is really scary. In the first wave they were generally men in their 50s and 60s who were overweight and had high blood pressure and/or diabetes. That’s not the case anymore.
My colleagues in other hospitals around the Midlands are reporting that their Covid admissions are quite young too.

[saundra]

Not good news jo is it
Take care everyone

[Suff]

It is certainly not over, but we are being bombarded with percentages again because, apparently, numbers won't do it.

The headlines are about 29% of people who have died from the Indian variant have been double vaccinated.

Yes, since the Indian variant was first detected in the UK over a month ago. Since then 42 people have died of it. 12 of them had both vaccines. Sounds terrible.

But Sky, on Saturday, reported:

Since February, of the 223 people who have been admitted to hospital with Delta, only 20 of them had received their second vaccine more than two weeks previously.

Yep, in the whole of the UK, from Feb, 223 people had been admitted to hospital with the Indian variant. Back in Feb, Daily deaths peaked at 1,451. In. One. Day!

We have to put this into perspective. If you test one person and that person dies, then you have a 100% death rate. If you test 1,000 people and one person dies, you have 0.1% death rate.

So let me try and put this into perspective. Since the beginning of June 80,000 have been infected. In that time, less than 224 people have been admitted to hospital with the variant and less than 42 have died.

Put that into % and it is bad right? 18% of the serious cases died. So far, the hospitalisations for the Indian variant are under 0.25% and the deaths are under 0.05%. Those numbers are high, remember I only took the 80k from the first two weeks in June.

I may be wrong about this and it may all take off. But, right now, it looks like the vaccinations are working. Hence why those being infected are younger. i.e. the demographic who still have not had their vaccine yet.

[Kaz]

That is quite concerning Jo.

[Workingman]

Jo, I see that Leek is to have surge testing. That must be a worry for Joe. I hope he is OK or that he is allowed to do some study from home.

[JoM]

Thanks Frank. We’re quite a way from Leek and his work is in Stafford so for now it’s not too bad. His work are very vigilant, they’re still doing temp checks before anyone starts work and working at distances with some furloughed so not all of the workforce are in, and he has a load of LFTs (for what they’re worth) from college. College should finish before the end of the month.

I think Alison’s concern (our neighbour) was for the younger ones on the close. I was working out yesterday that out of 12 houses there are 12 18-24 year olds and 9 under 18s. Thankfully our two are double jabbed but apart from the one girl who’s working in the NHS I doubt very much that any of the others have had a single dose of the vaccine yet.

[Kaz]

Thankfully all over 18s can book their first jabs from Friday! I won't stop worrying until Becky has had her second, but that will be August....

[JoM]

((((Kaz))))It’s such a worry isn’t it.

Birmingham’s now listed as being an area of concern so it’s advised to restrict socialising and travel in and out of the city. Yet again on the local radio this morning a community leader from one of the areas which is worst affected said that he’s tried and tried to persuade the community to follow guidelines and also get vaccinated, he’s tried to dispel all myths surrounding the vaccines yet uptake is low and infections are high and rising.

[Kaz]

I honestly believe it should be compulsory - medical exemptions only!!

At least they are making it so, for care home workers - and not before time.

[victor]

Quite agree Kaz we will NEVER got on top this.
It has got to be compulsory