Coronavirus infections have climbed by a million in a week in the U.K., data from the Office for National Statistics suggest. BBC News has more.
Swab tests suggest about one in every 16 people is infected, as the contagious Omicron variant BA.2 continues to spread. That’s just under 4.3 million people, up from 3.3 million the week before. The figures for the week ending March 19th, are thought to give the most accurate reflection of what’s happening with the virus in the community.
Rates were up in England and Wales, and Scotland reached a new high. Infections have started decreasing in Northern Ireland, however. The rates across the nations were:
• England: 6.4%, up from 4.9% last week – approximately one in 16 people
• Wales: 6.4%, up from 4.1% last week – approximately one in 16 people
• Northern Ireland: 5.9%, down from 7.1% last week – approximately one in 17 people
• Scotland: 9%, up from 7.15% last week – approximately one in 11 peopleA high number of infections means the U.K. can expect Covid hospitalisations to rise too, although vaccines are still helping to stop many severe cases, say experts.
According to the latest figures, there were 16,975 patients in hospital with the virus on March 23rd. About half will have been admitted for something else, rather than Covid, but tested positive.
In the week since March 19th, however, new daily infections appear to be slowing towards a new peak.
Most importantly, deaths have been below average throughout the winter, owing primarily to the mild Omicron Covid variant and the absence of flu.
Covid deaths have increased a bit since March 11th so we may see deaths above average in the next few weeks, though only moderately.
The fact that virus prevalence is currently close to record levels but there are no calls to reverse the opening up of society or U-turn on the ‘living with Covid’ strategy shows how much things have changed. The sky-high prevalence levels are also signs of how completely the vaccines have failed to prevent infection or spread – though they may still be offering some protection against serious disease in the elderly and vulnerable.
The big worry now is that the current prevailing calm is a product only of the mildness of Omicron, and that should a new, more virulent variant emerge then we will be plunged once again into fear, panic and restrictions. How the world would respond to the return of a virus that produces significant waves of excess deaths – and if one does emerge it will likely be even more evasive of the vaccines – is currently the big unknown. Let’s hope that instead, SARS-CoV-2 now goes the way of other pandemic pathogens, blending into the background, and we never have to find out, as frankly, I wouldn’t be hopeful of good sense prevailing.
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“Stay home. Save lives. Protect the NHS“, they said.
Didn’t work, did it? The NHS is in much worse shape now than it was before.
“NHS services continued to be available for patients who needed them”
My family’s experience suggests otherwise.
“Didn’t work, did it? The NHS is in much worse shape now than it was before.”
Some would say that was always the plan.
No question about it and what better way to assist the depopulation agenda especially when Bozo et al can simply stare in to the camera and say:
“It was covid what done it. Honest.”
Well, it protected the NHS from having to do, erm, anything for 15 months.
Except for the TikTok dances.
And mine.
Yours and a few million others. My experience was that the NHS was already a crapshoot and now it is considerably worse. Frankly I am looking forward to being dead, at home. Even then the wrong thing will be blamed.
Inevitable. You cannot take an under-resourced service, shut a lot of it down and reduce minimal bed capacity further and not create a crisis.
The problem is essentially political – not health related, and is long-standing, with the fiction of the Covid ‘crisis’ deepening long- standing problems.
The NHS is not under resourced it’s very badly managed and the staff benefits are too good, as in all the public sector. Where in the private sector do you get 6 months full pay then 6 months half pay for being off sick? When I was nursing I noticed that the those in the private sector and the self employed took half the time to recover from illnesses and operations that those in the public sector took because they weren’t going to be paid to stay off.
That pattern of sick leave applied when I worked for a GEC company in the late 70’s early 80’s; a Hawker Siddeley company in the 1980’s and RACAL between 1988 and 2002.
The NHS could never have the resources to do everything that people might want. However, it could potentially get at least the basics right.
The NHS is a car crash. My niece spent 7 and half hours waiting for a Doctor in A&E with a broken arm last weekend.
I’m sure our short sighted Politician’s have it all in hand, they’re quite competent lol.
I bet no one’s clapping for it by the end of 2021 !!
Get out your saucepans.Clap, you cretinous performing zombies. Clap what you have achieved.
The NHS is fully signed up to the government (anywhere, any level) proclivity for flatly denying that which is as plain to see as it’s possible. There is little or no truth that they are at pre-pandemic levels, which were anyway nothing to be smug about.
I know it has been said before, but it was NOT the “pandemic” which caused the disruption, it was the lockdowns and other government restrictions, plus the accompanying propaganda. This needs to be said every time the virus is blamed for a political action!
Spot on.
Yes!
My wife had a prolapse operation last October, having waited a year and then another six months “because of Covid”. She was due a follow up appt in January which she was desperate to keep because she was still experiencing discharge and bleeding. The follow up appt was, inevitably, cancelled “because of Covid”.
My wife explained her circumstances. She was told to go and see her GP. She managed to see her GP – a month later – who said he could see the problem but could do nothing about it because she needed to see a Gynaecologist. FFS. Two months later, the Gynaecologist deigned to see her. Said it needed restiched. Booked her in for August. That appt has now been cancelled “because of Covid”.
She won’t let me speak to anyone from “our NHS’ because she knows my piss is on a rolling boil.
Fuck this bullshit. The NHS is not there for you unless your arm us hanging off and they can’t find a way to defer, delay or otherwise postpone doing something.
Perhaps we could bang pots and sound car horns on a Thursday evening for all those people in pain, who missed timely diagnosis and were otherwise screwed by “Our NHS”.
Great to sell it all off, a Tory wet dream.
“We had no choice. It was Covid what did it”
Should have been done decades ago.
But it won’t make much difference as long as we retain the idea that the state should be responsible for people’s health. There seems no way to get rid of that. Can’t just sell it off and be shot of it.
As the UK population didn’t increased this is overtly criminal.
Whilst billions spent on pointless test and trace system, pointless vaccines and economic and societal destructive “lockdown” policies.
Boy if people dont realise now then really it will be years before this ends…
Personally I am young and healty and wont take the vaccine. I feel sorry for all the older people with ailments and illness that could easily be resolved yet NHS services have been removed.
This gov ran the equivalant of the NHS budget again! On this nonsense pandemic. Remember that…
“Disruption caused by the pandemic”.
No, by government restrictions.
‘NHS services continued to be available’?
So that’s why my partner had to spend the price of a small car on an operation, is it?
These spokesmen seem to think they can, yes, lie, and no one will spot them.