[spidermonkey09]

not sure what definition of the cohorts you're using here? the cohorts I've seen are these:

and that gives 88% of deaths from the top four cohorts. 65% is from the top 1 and a half cohorts?

Thats correct; my mistake, think I must have just counted down four cells (and still got the number wrong!)

[Duma]

In slightly deflating news, albeit probably makes sense from an scientific perspective, was listening to Zahawi on the radio just now suggesting that "gradual tiered easing of lockdown will start 2/3 weeks after top 9 priority cohorts vaccinated.' The planned timetable for that is end of March if all goes smoothly, which would suggest mid April before anything gets loosened up. Quite a big change from gradual easing after top 4 cohorts vaccinated (65% of deaths) to top 9 (99% of deaths and majority of pressure on NHS). Will be interesting to see whether that holds as suspect it will come under quite a lot of pressure from Tory right and public tbh.

Haven't seen that interview, but that was always my interpretation of how long this lockdown would last; the legislation says 31st March so I took that as the most reliable indicator of when it might end / restrictions might start being lifted. Especially given a) how long the first lockdown was, and b) that things are worse now than they were then.

Re the above lockdown 1 needed to get levels low enough to minimise spread in the absence of any immunity - cases/ deaths now are worse, but the vaccine is a massive positive now that was not available last year - by end of feb at current rates over 15M will have had first doses - and its reasonable to assume some acceleration, target is mid feb and that seems reasonable - thus nearly all those who are most at risk from the virus will have had at least one dose of vaccine - at some point in there will need to be a judgement about the continuing damage to wider society against the deaths prevented. 7% of the population have already had 1 dose.

[Bradders]

I hope you're right! I think my initial view had a lot to do with general pessimism about how quickly the vaccines could be rolled out, and it does seem to be going better than I'd thought.

[tomtom]

Surely the NHS pressure will be the main 'allower' of relaxation? For that - there is a 2-4 week lag on case numbers...

Lots of anecdotal tales of covid hospitalisations in the media being much younger this time around. I wonder if this is due to better resilience (behavioural, PPE, Shielding) amongst the elderly/vulnerable - or whether the new strain does go for a younger cohort? Expect we'll see in the figures eventually but its interesting nothing has shown up yet despite the reports from wards.

[spidermonkey09]

Surely the NHS pressure will be the main 'allower' of relaxation? For that - there is a 2-4 week lag on case numbers...

Lots of anecdotal tales of covid hospitalisations in the media being much younger this time around. I wonder if this is due to better resilience (behavioural, PPE, Shielding) amongst the elderly/vulnerable - or whether the new strain does go for a younger cohort? Expect we'll see in the figures eventually but its interesting nothing has shown up yet despite the reports from wards.

I think the vast majority of those in hospital are aged 50-70. Depends how you define much younger I suppose, but I haven't read anything thus far suggesting that those in their 20'/30's/40s are being disproportionately affected.

The million dollar question, which there is no answer for yet, is the effect that having 15m vaccinated has on NHS pressure. Hard to believe there wont be some impact, hopefully we will have a clearer view in a months time.

[Duma]

Surely the NHS pressure will be the main 'allower' of relaxation? For that - there is a 2-4 week lag on case numbers...

Lots of anecdotal tales of covid hospitalisations in the media being much younger this time around. I wonder if this is due to better resilience (behavioural, PPE, Shielding) amongst the elderly/vulnerable - or whether the new strain does go for a younger cohort? Expect we'll see in the figures eventually but its interesting nothing has shown up yet despite the reports from wards.

Agree, but even if younger demographics are a larger percentage of hospitalisations this time (and I've not seen any actual data to support that) (and there's a fair bit of data that shows the UK variant at least does not cause more severe disease), and despite media emphasis on younger cases (which I suspect is partly to encourage compliance among the young) the vast majority of the pressure on NHS is still from the elderly. If they are largely protected, pressure on the health service should ease.

Spidermonkey do you have a link for demographics for hospitalisations? Would be interesting.

[abarro81]

Duma: this is the best I could do in 5 min search -https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/1350079008076165121

I remember Spiegelhalter alluding to the ICU stats on the radio the other day

[spidermonkey09]

Think the data referred to in this thread is from ONS: https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1350416428025962498?s=20

[Duma]

Thanks Alex, so a key bit of info would be whether the pinch point in NHS capacity is hospital beds or ICU beds - makes a big difference to vaccination strategy? Looking down that thread it's data since oct 2020, so excludes first peak, which may be good as treatments have improved, but less data? Would like to see breakdown of the 45-64 age bracket too, that's where the interesting disconnect between cases/admissions/ICU/deaths is.

Hospital admissions dropping now and numbers in hospital flattened, rate of increase in ICU admissions slowing too - looks like lockdown is working. Hopefully this will be the worst week for the NHS.

[Duma]

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare#card-people_who_have_received_vaccinations_by_report_date_daily

worrying drop in vaccination numbers last couple of days - hopefully just a weekend thing.

[tomtom]

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare#card-people_who_have_received_vaccinations_by_report_date_daily

worrying drop in vaccination numbers last couple of days - hopefully just a weekend thing.

May also be that some surgeries have got all their ‘easy hits’ done (those over 80 who could easily come in etc..) and waiting for permission (now given) to go to the next group down etc..

[tomtom]

Some err worrying stats here 30% of those discharged from hospital after covid are readmitted at some point :-/

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/18/almost-30-of-covid-patients-in-england-re-admitted-to-hospital-after-discharge-study?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[teestub]

It’s so hard to know what to think about these sorts of one line stats when there are so many confounding factors with people’s health. Also the Guardian seem to love a good Covid scare story!

[petejh]

Approx 1.7m vaccinations carried out in the first 7 days since ramp up. Not bad! Hopefully Tues stats will be better.

From a twitter account that I follow:

U.K. Covid19 Vaccinations

1st Doses

UP TO 17/01/21 = 3,857,266
UP TO 18/01/21 = 4,062,501

Increase = 205,235

Daily doses needed to hit 15m target by feb 14th = 405,093

[spidermonkey09]

It’s so hard to know what to think about these sorts of one line stats when there are so many confounding factors with people’s health. Also the Guardian seem to love a good Covid scare story!

100%. I'm all for slagging the government off but I think a lot of the reporting around vaccine side effects in particular borders on the scaremongering.

[mrjonathanr]

I think the vast majority of those in hospital are aged 50-70. Depends how you define much younger I suppose, but I haven't read anything thus far suggesting that those in their 20'/30's/40s are being disproportionately affected.

The table 16 on p21 gives some info on this since September.
https://www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/2df8a199-6336-eb11-912c-00505601089b

[tomtom]

It’s so hard to know what to think about these sorts of one line stats when there are so many confounding factors with people’s health. Also the Guardian seem to love a good Covid scare story!

100%. I'm all for slagging the government off but I think a lot of the reporting around vaccine side effects in particular borders on the scaremongering.

Didn’t see any guardian articles about vaccine side effects...

 I was pointing to one about long covid.

It is going to feature for a good while once third out break is under some form of control. I know a couple of people with it - in varying forms - and at the moment everyone is scratching their heads about what to do.

[abarro81]

The gov dashboard isn't updated yet, but they announced that 4,266,577 have now received first vaccine dose, making Monday's daily vaccinations ~204,500. I.e. vaccinations per day has gone down three days in a row and is back below where it was on the 12th  Don't hold your breath for Malham season...

[Duma]

updated now, rubbish news, obviously along with the deaths numbers, although I guess that was already baked in to some extent.

[tomtom]

Yes - it’s quite disheartening when it needs to be above 400k a day (inc weekends) to make the target. And of course that 400k a day target goes up if it’s not reached every day.

I really wish this government could be transparent with the data on vaccine supply, demand and availability. I think everyone understands it’s not simple and that some places may get more than others at certain times. I’d be much more onboard (problems as well as successes) if I could see the context. As ever - it feels as if it’s a case of “don’t bother your head with these things - you don’t need to know” bullshit.

Positive test results were 33k though - which is a good decline and shows the new variant isn’t completely resistant to lockdown... it’s still masses though...

[Ali]

Looking at the Sky article linked to previously, which gave details of the vaccine supply schedule that Scotland was expecting, it appears that the second week of Jan there was very little supply (no Pfizer available at all). So maybe the low numbers of vaccinations over the last couple of days relate to stocks being low. If so there could be improvements soon as supply looked good for 3rd week of Jan.

[tomtom]

Reports from Israel suggesting that single Pfizer dose only 50% effective....

[Stabbsy]

Reports from Israel suggesting that single Pfizer dose only 50% effective....

I’d heard 89% today from an NHS source (the wife). There’s also something on More or Less this week suggesting 90% for one dose - although was only half listening while fingerboarding, so not sure if that’s Pfizer or AstraZeneca.

[spidermonkey09]

Reports from Israel suggesting that single Pfizer dose only 50% effective....

I’d heard 89% today from an NHS source (the wife). There’s also something on More or Less this week suggesting 90% for one dose - although was only half listening while fingerboarding, so not sure if that’s Pfizer or AstraZeneca.

Plus the fact the percentage was always highly likely to come down because the cohort which has had the vaccine, and which the data is based on, is hugely skewed towards the elderly and vulnerable.

Vaccine numbers are shite, not impressed!

[abarro81]

I’d heard 89% today from an NHS source (the wife). There’s also something on More or Less this week suggesting 90% for one dose - although was only half listening while fingerboarding, so not sure if that’s Pfizer or AstraZeneca.

IIRC the 90% they mentioned was from the JCVI, and the key difference vs Pfeizer's internal number was when you start counting. I.e. if you start from day 1 after the jab then you got 50% or so, but since we don't expect it to start working for 7-10 days, you can argue that you should count from 10 days after the jab, and if you do that then you get closer to 90%. From 5min on google it's not clear to me when the Israeli's are counting from as the reports all seems to be from some Israeli radio interview