Although the success of the vaccination programme and the various other methods people have used to bring the severity of Covid down, there are many people still having to go into hospital because of the virus.

The latest Weekly national respiratory and Covid-19 surveillance report from Public Health Scotland was published on 25th May 2023.

It is important to monitor COVID-19 hospital admissions as it is a measure of severe disease and captures pressures facing NHS hospitals.

In the latest week ending 21 May 2023, there were 115 new COVID-19 admissions to hospital. Hospital admissions for the most recent week are provisional and should be treated with caution. At the time of publication there were no data available for two NHS Health Boards, and the previous week’s figures have been rolled forward.

There were 12 COVID-19 admissions (1.2%) per 1,000 emergency admissions. In the same week, the 70-74 age group had the highest rate of COVID-19 admissions (1.5%) and the 18- 29 age group had the lowest rate (0.5%).

The number of COVID-19 patients in hospital is an indicative measure of the COVID19 pressure on hospitals, as these patients still require isolation from other patients for infection control purposes.

Due to changes to the national guidance for the infection prevention and control (IPC) precautions for SARS-CoV-2 positive patients, PHS updated the definition for COVID-19 hospital occupancy (recently confirmed COVID-19 patients in hospital). From 08 May 2023, this measure reduced the maximum number of days a patient will be categorised as a COVID-19 inpatient from 28 days to 10 days. These patients may still be treated in hospital for other reasons beyond 10 days but not considered infectious for COVID-19.

In the week ending 21 May 2023, on average there were 161 patients in hospital with COVID-19.

Caution is advised when making comparisons over time.

There were 6 new admissions to ICU, a decrease of 1 from the previous week (14 May 2023) when there were 7 admissions.

There were on average 205 patients in ICU, of which 4.9% (10 patients) had a positive SARS-CoV-2 result.

During the current spring vaccination programme, a total of 383,178 COVID-19 vaccines have been delivered to adults currently resident in Scotland. In the latest week ending 21 May 2023, 50,852 COVID-19 vaccines were administered. Among care home residents for older adults, 87.5% have been vaccinated against COVID-19 since the beginning of the spring programme.

#Covid Deaths Down, Excess Deaths Continue – Weekly Update