Covid Situation Report: May 16, 2024
Update on Covid providing information on positivity and hospital admissions for England and its regions. This post is best viewed using the browser or Substack app.
Introduction
This weekly Covid Situation report was originally posted on my substack ‘Seeing the Forest for the Trees’ where I publish articles on Covid and other topics. You can access my substack at the following link.
A reminder that not all of the data that was previously included in the situation update is now available on a weekly basis. Where relevant, changes to the content and data sources have been noted.
This week's article includes updates on the Spring 2024 booster campaign and deaths from Covid.
Summary
Overall, the past week’s data shows a mixed picture with the Covid positivity rate again increasing but weekly hospital admissions have plateaued across all regions and age groups.
There has been another rise in the Covid positivity rate this week, while the rates for Flu and RSV continued to fall.
Weekly hospital admission rates in England for Covid decreased very slightly, but have now stabilised at low levels for Flu.
Over the past week, all regions weekly hospital admissions due to Covid remained broadly unchanged. Weekly hospitalisation rates increased most for those aged 65 years and older and are getting high for those older than 85 years.
The good news is that deaths due to Covid remain significantly lower than last year.
A new variant, KP.2, has emerged which is quickly replacing the current JN.1 variants; however, early reports from the UKHSA show it does not have a significant relative growth advantage.
Considering the recent increased Covid levels, the notable decline in vaccine efficacy after 15 weeks and the emergence of a new variant, a successful Spring 2024 booster campaign is important to protect the most vulnerable populations.
The Spring 2024 booster campaign in England, which began on April 15, has had a good start, with over 2.8 million doses administered in the first four weeks. However, vaccination rates for the immunosuppressed remain low.
As always, it’s important to remember that the risk of hospitalisation from Covid infection increases significantly with age and for those immunocompromised. Also Long Covid remains a risk for all as shown by the recent ONS report. Therefore, it is prudent to take appropriate measures such as self-isolating when experiencing Covid symptoms and enhancing ventilation whenever possible.
Further analysis of the ONS data on Long Covid was covered in a recent article I posted which can be found here.
Status of main respiratory diseases in England
This section presents the latest data on positivity rates for primary respiratory infections in England. It is important to understand that positivity differs from prevalence, which refers to the overall percentage of COVID-19 in the general population. Appendix 1 provides a more detailed explanation of the difference and why positivity rates are a useful indicator of Covid infection levels
The chart below displays the test positivity rates for the main respiratory illnesses in England, including Flu, Covid, RSV, and Rhinovirus.
The Covid positivity rate has continued to increase, reaching 9.0% this week. Meanwhile, the flu positivity rate has declined further and is now significantly lower than that of Covid. Additionally, RSV rates have continued to drop to very low levels, accompanied by a minor decrease in Rhinovirus rates.
The following chart shows hospital admissions per 100,000 people in England for the main respiratory diseases.
Weekly hospital admission rates for Covid have plateaued at the levels seen in early December 2023. Admissions for Flu have stabilised and are now at low levels.
The next panel chart in this section shows Covid hospital admissions per 100,000 people by region. Hover your cursor over one of the chart lines to display the admission rates for all regions.
Hospital admission rates have remained broadly unchanged across the regions, with the highest levels now in the West Midlands and North West regions.
The final panel chart in this section shows Covid hospital admissions per 100,000 people by age. Each panel represents one age group and the title and lines are colour coded. The grey lines show all of the other age groups to provide context.
The recent increase in hospital admission rates for individuals over 65 years old has stopped, and the numbers are largely the same as last week. However, admission rates remain highest in the oldest age groups.
It's important to note that while testing policies have been updated from April 1, 2024, the guidelines for testing patients showing Covid symptoms or when a positive result would change the patient's treatment remained unchanged. Consequently, the number of Covid hospital admissions should be a dependable indicator of the virus's prevalence in the community for the period shown in these charts.
Covid hospital admissions and bed occupancy
This section gives a more detailed examination of the most recent daily Covid data for hospitals in England.
NHS England stopped the weekly publication of data used to create these dashboards from April 4, 2024. As a result, the next update of the daily Covid data for hospitals in England will be on June 13, 2024.
Spring 2024 Booster Campaign
The Spring 2024 booster campaign started an April 15. Considering the early signs of increasing Covid levels and the decline in vaccine efficacy after 15 weeks, a successful Spring 2024 booster campaign is important to protect the most vulnerable populations.
The following chart displays the weekly number of doses administered during the booster campaigns for England to date. The Spring campaigns are represented in green, the Autumn campaigns in brown, and doses administered outside of these campaigns are depicted in grey.
The chart shows the difference between the Spring and Autumn campaigns, each with its unique eligibility requirements. The Spring booster campaign is exclusively for individuals aged 75 and above, residents of care homes, and those with compromised immune systems. According to NHS England, approximately 7.3 million people qualify for the Spring campaign.
The Spring 2024 booster campaign is progressing well, with more than 2.8 million doses administered in the first four weeks. However, the following table indicates disparities among the eligible groups. It compares the present coverage of the Spring 2024 booster campaign by eligible group to the final coverage of the 2023 booster campaigns in England and Scotland. Unfortunately, care home coverage is not available for the 2023 booster campaigns for England.
The table clearly shows that although good progress is being made for those in care homes and 75 years and older, vulnerable individuals with compromised immune systems are again falling behind on vaccine coverage.
The final table in this section shows the Spring 2024 coverage by ethnicity.
The Spring 2024 booster campaign has seen much lower uptake among ethnic minority groups, continuing a trend observed in previous campaigns.
You can check to see if you are eligible and book a booster at the following link.
Covid Deaths in England and Wales
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) publishes weekly reports on the number of deaths recorded on death certificates that are due to Covid or where Covid was involved. The data available is for both England and Wales. The following chart compares the number of deaths due to Covid in England and Wales by the week of registration for 2023-24 with the previous year. The chart does not include deaths where Covid was identified as a contributing cause on the death certificate.
The weekly death toll due to Covid in 2023/24 has significantly decreased compared to the previous year and continues to decline to relatively low levels. As of the week ending May 3, 2024, there were 61 deaths attributed to Covid, with an additional 36 deaths where Covid was noted as a contributing factor.
In conclusion
Despite the reduced level of data now published, the available information indicates that the recent rise in Covid levels have now stopped and we may be seeing its peak.
A new variant, KP.2, is widely circulating although, at present, it does not appear to have a significant relative growth advantage over other variants in circulation.
The Spring 2024 booster is progressing well, with over 2.8 million doses administered in the first four weeks. However, the immunosuppressed remain under vaccinated.
Deaths due to Covid remain significantly lower than last year.
As always, if you have any comments on this Covid Situation Report or suggestions for topics to cover, please post a message below.
Appendix 1. Test positivity rates and prevalence
Positivity rates are derived from the results of hospital laboratory tests conducted on patients exhibiting symptoms of respiratory diseases. Test positivity is the percentage of patients who test positive for Covid of the total number of patients tested. Since the individuals tested for this measure are not a representative sample of the general population it differs from prevalence, which is derived from a representative sample of the population.
Test positivity rates, while not directly estimating the number of Covid infections in the general population, can be a valuable indicator of the infection trend. The panel chart below compares the weekly test positivity rate among hospital patients with respiratory symptoms to the prevalence of Covid in the general population, as reported in the Winter Infection Survey.
The chart shows that the weekly test positivity rates for patients with symptoms of respiratory infections follows the same pattern as the prevalence for Covid reported by the Winter Infection Survey. Since the Winter Infection Survey is based on a representative sample of the general population this supports using test positivity as a useful indicator for infection trends.
Please would you do a piece on all the newly emegring 'old' diseases causing so much illness and death e.g measles, whooping cough, TB, EGAS etc. I would love your opinion on the relationship to Covid, there appears to be a lot of papers now suggesting that Covid does affect our immune systems (rather like measles and chicken pox do).
Also a piece on the morbidity and mortality from other diseases that are Covid related. e.g Heart disease and strokes and autoimmune diseases especially Diabetes type 1 types.
I really appreciate your reports, but just would love the wider view of what this ongoing pandemic is doing to us all long term, so we can prepare as best as possible.
We are truely into the 'you do you' phase of neo liberalism now and the informaion you share helps those of us not deemed 'worthy' enough for the vaccines to stay alive a bit longer.
Thank you for all you do.
Great to have as ever. The explanation on Positivity vs Prevalence has been really useful. Had to explain this to friends recently - plenty of people unaware.