The research, issued Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration and produced by the National Institutes of Health, said the rapid antigen tests — which have been in high demand and often hard to find this holiday season — “do detect the omicron variant but may have reduced sensitivity.”
The upshot is the tests will still help detect cases, but because of reduced sensitivity, there are more false negatives. So, it will help people who test positive know to quarantine and seek treatment if necessary, but will miss more infections than before.
This might help to explain some of the infections where everyone was tested before a gathering, and then lots of people become ill.
In the UK, the current wave of new cases doesn’t appear to have peaked, even now a month later. They also just reported the highest 7 day rolling average of confirmed deaths since March 10, 2021, back when less than 2% of their population was fully vaccinated.
Omicron may very well turn out to be less severe, but the overall outcome in the UK is looking like it might be worse than Delta.
Again, we still don’t know for sure as they haven’t peaked and deaths lag cases, but I’m certainly not ready to call Omicron less scary.
That appears to be possibly true, but it’s not a given as one can see by simply clicking on the 1 month view. Of course, London’s hospital admissions are higher than they’ve ever been since the time when the UK passed 1% of the population being fully vaccinated, and again, hospital admissions, and deaths, lag behind cases. In other words, this appears to have a bigger impact than Delta did in the UK.
Hospital admissions in London peaked exactly a year ago on Jan 6, 2021 at 977. The peak of the current wave (so far) was on Dec 29, when 511 were admitted.
You may say that’s due to vaccinations, and you’re probably right, but that’s all to the good.
If you look at deaths in London, they peaked at 217, on Jan 17 last year. The peak in the current wave is (so far) 26, on Dec 30.
This is London data. It is time adjusted, to show the earlier wave as well.
Hospital admissions, while they have risen, are far lower than the level of the earlier wave. The use of ventilators, and ICU admissions (ICU not shown here) are barely moving. Hospitals are going to have rising patients, but not in the ICU area. Deaths barely moving as well.
In the US there seem to be hints of a plateau in multiple states/territories. I’ve been watching PR and DC in particular because they had very high vaccination rates, and they are showing a definite plateau. Even where I live, with its mediocre vaccination rate, the slope decreased the first time for today.
US deaths have remained remarkably flat. Hospitalizations are up, but not in as great a proportion to cases as past surges. Of course that’s cold comfort when it’s a smaller proportion of a much larger surge.
It’s an unscientific example and probably influenced by my own wishful thinking. But it’s encouraging to see that there are already some places showing signs of turning a corner, without deaths rocketing to the moon.
I wouldn’t read too much into that figure nor directly compare it to previous waves for two specific reasons
a) the xmas and new year period figures are not accurate and deaths unreported previously are being reported now
b) the deaths are also reported as people dying with Covid and a much greater number of people infected will see that figure increasing even if Omicron is not causing the deaths.
By what metric are you measuring “worse”? if it is less severe then how can the overall outcome be worse as less people will die.
If you scroll further down, you’ll see that the author of the tweet mentions the major caveat that cases in middle-aged and elderly lag the younger people. This is where you’ll so most of the hospitalizations and deaths. On the bright side, that rise cases seem to be slowing down too.
Denmark looks like it’s cases and hospitalizations have plateaued. Their omicron surge started about a week before the UK, AFAIK. New York City, DC, and most of Puerto Rico have peaked.
On one hand, I’m cautiously optimistic. On the other hand, cases in my county are still going up and I have to teach college students starting Jan 18. Not a happy camper right now.
As I already stated, I’m comparing it to Delta, or really any time frame with similar vaccination levels. Both hospitalizations and deaths are higher than during Delta. Both. Higher.
January of last year had less than 1.0% of the UK population fully vaccinated. It’s at least a tad higher than that today. If your argument is “Omicron looks less scary than pre-vaccine CoVID”, sure, but that’s a REALLY low bar.
So you’re saying we should wait before we make the call? Okay.
If something kills 0.5% of the people who catch it, and 60% of the population catches it, that is worse than something which kills 1.0% of the infected while infecting just 20% of the total. As we’ve been saying all along, it is quite possible that Omicron will be less severe on an individual basis than previous variants but wreak absolute havoc due to spreading much wider and further.
Yup, and it can wreak havoc even if it doesn’t kill or even send people to the hospital. If a significant percentage of healthcare workers are infected and have to stay home until they’re over it, people without COVID can suffer poor health outcomes due to the staffing shortages.
UK Numbers as of today, going back a full year, in chart form, since everyone keeps pretending they’ve finished with Omicron. You’ll also note that at no point was Delta this high in any of the three categories:
When you consider case numbers you also have to take into the account the number of tests.
More tests lead to more positive tests. So it’s misleading to compare case numbers directly without taking into the number, type, and circumstances of tests.
Last January testing in the UK was a third to quarter of what it is now, but the proportion of positive tests now is about double what it was then.
no-one is pretending anything of the kind. Omicron will race through the population, numbers will go high and then probably drop off quickly as well. The point at which that happens will vary from country to country.
The numbers in the UK haven’t increased appreciably for the last week so it is probably plateuing here.
It caused equivalent numbers of daily deaths at a fraction of the number of cases.
Did you miss me mention the new daily hospitalizations and death numbers are higher in the UK than at any point during Delta?
Remember when you said this?
Well, I provided those numbers and they suck. Since shortly after the first people started becoming fully vaccinated, neither of those numbers has ever been higher than right now in the UK. The number of incorrect statements that you made earlier in this thread is mind boggling, and I’ll happily start picking them apart one by one if you keep this up.
No one has ever argued that that wasn’t what we expected. Remember, we’re not supposed to worry about cases, just hospitalizations and deaths. Those daily raw numbers are again, higher than they were at any point during the Delta wave. Higher. Should I mention that again? Higher. We’ve stated over and over that milder severity mixed with higher infectivity could prove to be worse than Delta. It’s still early, but it’s appearing to be the case.
Well, we’ve reached the tipping point in regards to our district’s skyrocketing infection rate. Just received this, and it goes into effect tomorrow. We have 17 staff members out, and our superintendent was also sent home.
This correspondence is to inform you that the District will be implementing e-learning instruction beginning Friday, January 7, 2022, and returning to in-person instruction on Thursday, January 20, 2022. Elevated COVID-19 cases within our School District have caused significant staffing shortages therefore, we have made the difficult decision to transition to a remote learning format. We believe this decision is only a temporary disruption to in-person learning. School will begin daily at its regular scheduled times. Please see an overview of our E-Learning Plan on our website under Parent Resources. Students’ schedules will not change. Classes will meet live using the Google Meets link in their Google Classrooms.
To ensure a safe return to in-person learning, we will require every student and staff member to show proof of a negative Covid-19 test result in order to be admitted into the school. The District will provide on-site testing on Saturday, January 15, 2022, and Sunday, January 16, 2022. We will inform you of the day and time you can come in for testing.
My kids’ school was open for the first day back from break yesterday, and abruptly closed this morning for today and tomorrow due to the Covid conditions. As we understand it, at least two staff members tested positive. It’s a small school. As it happens, we didn’t send our kids yesterday, so no exposure for them. I had been pretty astounded that they were not already going remote due to omicron, so I’m not at all surprised.
We are awaiting word on the length of the closure, and availability of remote learning.
We still need to get the kids their second Covid shots. I felt like we had the luxury of waiting to have more optimal spacing between the shots, since the kids both had delta a few months ago now. But with omicron hitting both the vaccinated and the previously infected, now I’m in favor of whatever interval we get, and want to schedule sooner rather than later.
