One response to “Rise in Patients in Hospital with #Covid”

1. 

   S Davidson

   September 15, 2023 at 2:47 pm

   Not so sure whether the low detected levels in the wastewater actually show a decrease. At first glance it may look like it… however, when checking the Met Office’s observation website (https://wow.metoffice.gov.uk/) for the closest local station (which is Hatston) one finds that the last sampling day was a pretty wet day with quite some rainfall. I would argue that it is a safe assumption to conclude that the latest figures therefore may not be representative of the virus presence in the community.

   We also only look at the Scottish published data. To a certain extent, the UK government still reports Scottish data too… and there is a discrepancy. The weekly dashboard (coronavirus.data.gov.uk) now shows just the English data. But, you can still search by postcode, including Scottish ones. Whilst the Scottish authorities report provisional figures of 251 admissions in the week up to September 10th, the UK reports for Scotland: ‘Between 5 September 2022 and 11 September 2022, 370 went into hospital with coronavirus. This shows a decrease of 7.0% compared to the previous 7 days.’ Whilst the discrepancy between 251 and 370 for the almost identical period could be due to admission “with” or admission “because of” Covid, it is perhaps too significant to easily explain it away by this.
   The reported number of people in hospital (420) is the same, no discrepancy there.

   According to the postcode level results in the dashboard, these are the latest confirmed cases for Orkney: ‘Between 3 September 2023 and 9 September 2023, 6 people had a confirmed positive test result. This shows an increase of 500.0% compared to the previous 7 days.’
   6 (identified) cases seems to be a low number. There will definitely be more… because people testing positive at home can no longer report their results.

   And when looking how these cases translate into the cases per 100,000 people rate (keeping in mind the tricky undertaking of scaling up “small region numbers” for better comparison) reported as 26.8 in the dashboard, this would put Orkney at 2nd place of today’s hotspot list published by the Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-hotspots-infections-symptoms-coronavirus-b2412053.html

   Looking wider around the globe: Admissions are rising in many places, in the US, in Germany, in Austria and elsewhere (they all still maintain dashboards which can easily be found online). This puts pressure on healthcare services, many of which in a far less precarious position as the NHS and therefore more likely to cope better. Still, several countries take a more cautious approach, given that we cannot yet know what variant evolution we face. Recommendations for masks are being issued, locally sometimes those are mask mandates, vaccinations are being rolled out far broader than in the UK (example US where everyone over 6 months of age gets it if they wish).
   Meanwhile, our “visiting dentist” this morning at the BBC Radio Scotland phone-in, disqualifies himself by almost each single statement he makes. Several were simply wrong and plain nonsense. For example, one of which refers to masks. Whether fit-tested or not, correctly worn FFP3 masks definitely do protect. And they do so far better than the flimsy surgical masks. The argument of fit-testing does not hold. None of us works in a BSL3+ lab. Still we get more protection by a not fit-tested FFP3 than by a surgical mask. I could go on about masks, but I leave this to someone who can do this far better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi_EV4QB3Io&t=1s (a short video from a member of the Independent Sage group, well worth watching!).

   Hence, whilst the wider public might not be happy with a mask mandate (although it should be re-introduced at least for hospitals, GP practices and so forth), I think that at least a strong recommendation should be issued. Also, it is time to finally train people, how to use masks correctly. They don’t work if they are dangling under the nose, they don’t work, if they slip down all the time because nobody has noticed that there is a wire on the top which can be adjusted to the bridge of the nose, and they don’t work if they are being taken off repeatedly… listen to Trish’s video!

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