Covid levels continued to drop in England last week, falling to their lowest levels since the start of December before Omicron took off. MailOnline has more.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates 1.2 million, or one in 45 people, were carrying the virus on any given day in the week to May 7th, down a quarter on the previous week.
It marks the fifth week in a row that the ONS’s weekly infection survey – now the best barometer of the outbreak – has reported a week-on-week fall in cases, despite no Covid restrictions being in place.
The Government is relying on the study, based on swabs of 120,000 random people, to track the virus now that free testing has been axed for the vast majority of Britons.
Today’s estimate for England is the lowest since the week ending December 16th, when 1.2m people were also estimated to have been infected. At that point, the Omicron strain was just starting to take off and in the following weeks there were mounting calls to follow some EU countries in enforcing another lockdown.
Ministers also resisted renewed calls from NHS bosses for tougher restrictions last month when the BA.2 variant, an off-shoot of Omicron, pushed rates to record-highs.
Meanwhile, the ONS estimates one in 35 people were carrying Covid in Wales and Scotland last week and one in 55 in Northern Ireland.
It’s good to see the Mail drawing attention to the fact that these declines happen without the need for restrictions. Interesting that Scotland is doing worse than England despite keeping masks and vaccine passports in place for longer.
Another interesting point is that after the large Omicron wave, which reached around 8% prevalence in England during March, the current 2.2% prevalence seems low. However, it’s actually higher than was reached during the entire Delta wave during the latter part of 2021.
The breakdown by age shows an interesting contrast between Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 waves. BA.2 spread broadly throughout the age groups, and unusually for Covid had higher prevalence in older people than younger.
BA.1 on the other hand was much higher in younger people, with the 70-plus age group not getting above 3% and the 50-69 age group scarcely above 5%.
Despite this huge difference in prevalence in the most vulnerable age groups between the two waves – in the 70-plus age group, BA.2 was around two and half times more prevalent than BA.1 – the number of deaths in the two waves has been similar, peaking around the same level and with slightly fewer deaths overall in the BA.2 wave.
This seems to imply BA.2 was half as deadly as BA.1 or even lower. What explains this apparent difference in infection fatality rate? No vaccine booster programme was delivered between the two waves. Is it because it’s not winter anymore, so a seasonal effect, or is it some inherent property of the virus? Part of it will be mortality displacement, with many of those at high risk of death dying in the BA.1 wave so no longer around to succumb to BA.2. Whatever the cause, it’s good to see deaths remaining relatively low, with little or no excess mortality, despite the high viral prevalence of the last few months.
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FFS even you’re peddling this shite about “two waves” now.
Waste of time coming to this site anymore.
The simpler reason is that the most vulnerable died in early 2020, don’t forget that the mortality in the previous few flu seasons were reduced.There was no second wave, it was the natural cycle for a corona virus. We never refer to multiple waves of any other respiratory virus infection when they’re known to be seasonal. There will be an increase in “cases”, possibly hospitalisations and deaths starting late August/early September. What must be avoided at all costs is closing in September/October or more likely not reopening the country on 21/6, that would be catastrophic.
Fair point about the most vulnerable dying in the spring. I have updated the post in response to your comment.
Wow, reader democratic input. I love LS.
Reduced morality between the two waves? The deaths in April 2020 were probably due to patients actually having CoViD19 related pneumonia, don’t forget there is/was no definitive diagnosis for a SARS-CoV-2 infection, being discharged to make space for the expected epidemic (a self fulfilling prophecy)
But boris said we need to lock up the young to save the old. He said it was impossible for vulnerable people to remain at home and be safe whilst young people went out socialising (I mean, they went out to work every day but that’s ok, Covid only kills granny if you’re out of the home for pleasure). Another absolute shocker. Who could have seen this coming?
Second Wave….Third Wave…..there was no f**king First Wave!!!! The whole thing has been a load of bollocks from the start!
I wonder who many waves we will have to have had before the great British public wake up to this nonsense.
Actually, the bar chart for the autumn is consistent with a phase of totally normal mortality, followed by a post-jab surge in ‘vulnerable’ deaths.
I don’t think we should start saying that care homes have been doing a good job. They sound like they’ve become the most soulless hellholes I’ve ever heard of. I’d honestly rather just top myself than go there and never see a human face or touch ever again. Nothing short of torture.
Yes, when my time for this comes I plan to take a pack of sandwiches and die quietly down an old mineshaft in the Pennines rather than go to the old folks death camp. If I can remember to do that, of course.
No doubt they’ll have been paid handsomely to take the dischargees, since many are privately owned or in the third sector these days and can say no thanks to the local Council and NHS Trust.
You’re also absolutely correct about them becoming soulless hellholes, see if you can find information about their self-isolation protocols following positive test results, it’s a shocker. My grandma currently resides in a large one due to fairly advanced dementia, and has on several occasions over the past 16 months been locked in a room not much bigger than a prison cell 24 hours a day for 2 weeks at a time.
They are basically torture camps and prisons. What is worse, letting an old person live to the full and enjoy their lives and accept that there is a risk they will get ill and die (As let’s face it is inevitable for all of us) or attempt to keep them alive forever but in doing so condemn them to a living hell?
To take the point further rather then accepting we are here temporarily and that death is inevitable we as a society now treat death as a horrific event which can and must be avoided at all costs. In doing so we are condemning ourselves to a life locked up in the house, miserable and not living only to find that we end up dying anyway.
I suppose what I am getting at is that there are lots of horrible things we can die of, with Covid been just one of them, also that death is unavoidable so we should all get out there and get living and making the most of the short time we are all here rather than cowering in terror under the kitchen table listening to the doom and gloom prophecies of scientists and politicians whose only aim seems to be to make everyone’s lives as sad and miserable as theirs are.
My dad died in one four years ago. I will NEVER allow anyone to put me in one of those hell – holes. I will see myself off before crossing the threshold of any “care” home.
My thoughts exactly. Doing minor research into the best, most painless ways. My insurance policy.
Second wave – third wave … blow wave – microwave – new wave.
They’re all stark waving mad.
Demi wave
Radio wave
Second Wave!?!?
A virus doesn’t travel in ‘waves’, who writes this shit?
I find myself wondering if the care home fatalities in March/April 2020 were possibly not so much about the dreaded lurgy, just that hospitals rushed the discharge of patients who weren’t likely to survive much longer anyway and covvie the least of their problems. Cue spike in deaths of care home residents. Hospitals then had lots of bed spaces for patients that never materialised – probably because everyone was told not to bother the health service unless they couldn’t breathe, by which point it was likely too late. Hospitals wouldn’t have been able to send patients requiring ventilation (and with low chance of survival) to most care homes, so lo and behold the Nightingales were built – basically sending people away to die. However, those patients didn’t materialise either and the spaces were not suitable for provision of general hospital services.
Got to wonder exactly who the hospital folk thought they’d be treating when they decided to clear the wards…if anyone…
Well don’t forget, this was something of a coordinated effort – certainly all across Europe and the US, from east coast to west, the strategy was prevalent across the world in care home facilities; if you were related to a Democrat lawmaker in places like Pennsylvania you actually had a chance of making it out, before they put thousands of covid patients in.
Why do people persist with this fantasy that it was covid that killed all the care home residents in “the first wave”. It was kicking seriously ill and frail people out of hospital and then denying them all medical care that caused their death, not “COVID”. Government and NHS decided to collude in an act of genocide, then a bunch of trained monkeys stood banging pots and pans and clapping the murder. Stop lying about it being covid and call it what it was. A deliberate cull of an unwanted class of people. Or keep telling yourself whatever makes you feel comfortable.
No mention that the excess care home deaths in Jan/Feb coincided with the vaccine rollout?
Anecdotally, deaths ‘with Covid’ followed shortly after vaccination – because natural immune systems were suppressed – but there will never be an investigation of course, as this conclusion would be off-narrative. Very easy to audit, though, if any journalist could be bothered.
“The reduction in morality”: great typo! Morality was chucked out of the window right from the start of this sh*tstorm!