…the mild omicron variant continues to rage through NSW, with another big jump in cases, more hospitalizations, more in ICU, and sadly another 9 deaths.
Dec 3: 306
Dec 11: 485
Dec 12: 586
Dec 13: 804
Dec 14: 1360
Dec 15: 1742 (Exceeded the previous highest amount of cases)
Dec 16: 2213 (192 cases admitted to hospital, 26 in ICU)
Dec 17: 2482 (215 cases admitted to hospital, 24 in ICU)
Dec 18: 2566 (206 cases admitted to hospital, 26 in ICU)
Dec 19: 2501 (227 cases admitted to hospital, 28 in ICU)
Dec 20: 2482 (261 cases admitted to hospital, 33 in ICU)
Dec 21: 3033 (284 cases admitted to hospital, 39 in ICU)
Dec 22: 3763 (302 cases admitted to hospital, 40 in ICU)
Dec 23: 5715 (347 cases admitted to hospital, 45 in ICU)
Jan 4th: 23,131 cases, 2 deaths (1,344 cases admitted to hospital, 105 in ICU)
Jan 5th: 35,054 cases, 8 deaths (1491 cases admitted to hospital, 119 in ICU)
Jan 6th: 34,994 cases, 6 deaths (1609 in hospital, 131 in ICU)
Jan 7th: 38,625 cases, 11 deaths (1738 in hospital, 134 in ICU)
Todays update:
Jan 8th: 45,098 cases, 9 deaths (1795 in hospital, 145 in iCU)
Has the CDC released excess deaths numbers for December yet? If the hospitals are full people who died at home without treatment wouldn’t necessarily be identified as Covid-related this soon (or perhaps ever).
I don’t know about the CDC but the UK government keep a close eye on this and no statistically significant excess mortality has been seen up to the end of 2021. It is possible that may change but that observation remains in line with the hypothesis that people are not getting as sick and people aren’t dying at home in large numbers without treatment.
At one point there were over 4000 patients in ventilation beds and right now there are about 850. That figure hasn’t shifted much over the last few weeks so capacity to care for the very ill remains. Unless people are bypassing the ICU and dying straightaway instead then to me it still looks like a very different situation.
The biggest issue is staff shortages across all sectors due to people having to isolate rather that huge numbers dying.
According to certain news sites, Switzerland does not always require a PCR test for confirmation.
Neu braucht es keinen Bestätigungs-PCR-Test mehr, wenn ein Antigen-Schnelltest ein positives Resultat zeigt. Das bestätigt das BAG auf Anfrage von 20 Minuten.
My mother was given monoclonal antibodies on the strength of a rapid test. They did not suggest following up with a PCR test. Monoclonal antibodies are in short supply. So the medical establishment had a high degree of confidence in the diagnosis.
I was asked several times to show or email the photos i took of that test. So i guess they believe the test itself, but don’t trust me (random non-medical person) to read it. Which seems fair.
The most recent report only goes through week 52 and says that England has had excess mortality every single week between weeks 40 and 49, except for a single week. If by “up to the end” you are referring to only weeks 50, 51, and 52, I guess you are technically correct (so far). It also says:
The recent weeks’ data are estimates with large registration delay corrections and therefore should be interpreted with caution. These estimates may differ substantially from future reports as more deaths are registered.
I don’t know if they publish it elsewhere, but I typically use wonder.cdc.gov for data searches and December 2021 is considered “Provisional and Partial” so far (all of 2021 is actually provisional).
Here’s what I found for the past few years. I think it’s clear that December 2021 isn’t done yet.
my point is that the the year end period (that has been affected by omicron) currently looks no different to the weeks of delta in terms of excess mortality.
indeed, which I why I said.
What won’t change is the stable figure of ICU patients which is a count of the situation on the specific days and not subject to significant revision.
It is a figure that has moved in lockstep with hospitalisations and deaths throughout all the various waves and it seems significant to me that it hasn’t moved substantially yet. Expecially seeing as it was a predicted signal if omicron truly is a less severe disease.
i.e. that we would see lots of cases, more hospitalisations (but for shorter periods), more people recorded as being in hospital with covid (but not all because of covid), but not huge rises in severe illness or deaths.
Those predictions seem to be holding true for now, of course that situation may change.
In the US, hospitals are currently overwhelmed. I’m seeing articles about hospitals allowing staff to work with mild covid symptoms, because so many are out sick. Our hospitalization rates are surging. Not just “hospitalized and have covid”, but total hospitalizations, which means there must be a “from covid” component.
Anyone who thinks omicron is not having or going to have significant impact on the US healthcare system should definitely read the Atlantic article that BB posted upthread.
I think it’s pretty clear from the data that hospitalizations caused by Omicron in places like UK, Denmark, Canada, and the US are much higher than their delta surges. The good news is that it looks like cases and hospitalizations are slowing down in UK, Denmark, and Canada. The US is still plugging along as it sweeps across the country.
I think it’s way too soon to tell how this will affect deaths. I’m going to take a not so wild guess and say that the UK will do much better than the US because it has a lot of immunity (especially boosters). In fact, Denmark and Canada will also do much better. Even though the US has a lot of natural immunity, our healthcare system is collapsing.
The NYT has a nice article entitled, “How to Think About Covid Data Right Now”. One interesting note, they mention that around half of the “hospitalizations” are people being admitted for something else and are coincidentally testing positive for covid. This is good news except that these patients now risk exposing other covid-negative patients and staff. I’m assuming they have to quarantine them and use covid protocols. This makes them harder to care for than a covid-negative patient. Even with half the hospitalizations being for something other than covid, there is definitely a disconnect between cases and hospitalizations.
Hospitalization figures are not without flaws. “National data don’t allow us to distinguish between people hospitalized because of Covid-19 and those who happened to test positive while admitted for something else,” said Jason L. Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, who tracks Covid data.
These “incidental patients” may be more prevalent right now because Omicron is so transmissible. Some hospitals are reporting that these patients may make up as much as half of their hospitalizations.
They also mention the delay in death rates. This delay tends to be three weeks following hospitalizations. They are hopeful that since half the hospitalizations are due to something else, and there already is a disconnect between cases and hospitalizations, there will be an even larger disconnect between cases and deaths.
My bad. I was going by what you said (and what your link was in reference to), not what you apparently meant. I’ll try and refrain from doing so in the future.
I’ve said this a few times and I still wonder if the speedy roll-out of the vaccine in the USA has been a mixed-benefit. My reading of the research suggests that the 3-week regime for the early USA vaccinations is not as long-lasting as the 12-week gap for the mostly AZ jab in the UK. That could be compounded by slow booster roll-out as well so that you end up with waning protection from a sub-optimal initial 2-dose gap and not enough boosters yet.
I also wonder if some of that same pattern is emerging in some European countries. It’ll be interesting to see what analysis gets done on that.
Maybe, but the boosters would have taken care of that by now. We have plenty of shots available but, as usual, our citizens are not bothering to take advantage of this.
I’m not sure what you mean by this, my link took you to the weekly reports on excess mortality for the end of 2021 and we were discussing the potential difference between the figures seen during the delta wave and those of the omicron wave (from mid-dec up to now) plus the possibility of people dying rather than being included in hospital figures.
If you are unsure about what I’m saying, or I’ve been unclear I’m happy to explain and clarify.
As long as the right number of people within the vulnerable groups are boosted in time, yes.
The fact that you say people aren’t taking advantage of it suggests that a large number of vulnerable people remain unboosted. In a country as large as the USA, even a small percentage shortfall in boosted vulnerable people equates to millions at risk.
Only 60% of our > 65 are boosted. Hell, only 88% of > 65% are fully-vaccinated. It gets much worse for > 50. 51% of them are boosted and 73% of them are fully-vaccinated. Plenty of the > 50 crowd have had covid, but unlike the UK, that’s it. They have no other form of immunity because they’re a bunch of anti-vaxxers.
Except your link specifically shows that during the last 12 weeks of 2021 there was statistically significant excess mortality in:
Country
Weeks with Statistically Significant Excess Mortality
England
40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49
Wales
40, 42, 43, 45
Northern Ireland
48
Scotland
40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49
So on the one hand, we have the claim that there was no statistically significant excess mortality up to the end of 2021. On the other hand, the actual link that the claim was based on shows about half of the country/weeks that make up the last 12 weeks of 2021 show statistically significant excess mortality.
We were talking about the period of omicron activity and the proposed associated excess mortality which is roughly weeks 50,51,52.
That is what I was referring to when talking about “up to the end of 2021” and indeed the most recent reports that I linked to shows no overall excess mortality for that period.
My fault for not specifying a start date clearly but seeing as the conversation was about excess mortality specifically due to omicron I assumed it was obvious we were only interested in those weeks that omicron was present and in the majority. Otherwise I’d be claiming that no excess mortality was seen in 2021 which would be nonsensical seeing as we had the biggest surge of all right at the beginning of the year.
That excess mortality was seen at many points during 2021 in general is not in question. Significant excess mortality has not (yet) been seen for the period of omicron supremacy (which I believe is Robert Ludlum’s unfinished novel)
So I think we are clear now and in agreement I hope.