Critical Care Figures Cast Doubt on ‘Second Wave’
by Neville Hodgkinson Charts and graphs can sometimes convey more of what is going on than millions of words. Here is one such, from the latest report by the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre. It shows how many patients, as a daily average, were in critical care for each month over the past five years. The figures cover England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The vertical columns show the monthly totals for 2020, and the four horizontal lines show the totals for the previous four years. We can see clearly that after the huge spike that occurred in April, caused by COVID-19’s arrival, the monthly totals are either about the same, or less, than in all the previous years. That includes October, when the UK was already being told we were in a second wave of the epidemic and must face drastic new restrictions in our lives to save the NHS from being overrun. The October figure shows an increase in patients in critical care whose illness was attributed to Covid, but nowhere near that of the April peak. And it hasn’t continued to rise: latest figures show a decline in both admissions and deaths where Covid was involved. Total deaths are running at about a fifth higher than the five-year average, though how much of that is attributable ...