Covid – it’s been out the news for a long time but it’s not gone away as a new group of variants, known collectively as FLiRT, has been increasing in the USA and now in the UK.

One of the FLiRT variants, KP.2, caused around 25% of new sequenced cases in the US over the last 2 weeks of April, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Reliable data is difficult to come by because most cases of Covid will not be reported unless someone is hospitalised or dies. There’s also little/no tracing going on and people who have Covid are asked to either stay at home, or if they cannot do that , to go to work under the advice of ‘Living with Covid.’

The latest release of figures from Public Health Scotland was published on 27th June 2024. PHS state: “COVID-19 transmission has been occurring in waves throughout the year as observed from surveillance data since the start of the pandemic in 2020.”

“With an increase in circulation of COVID-19 currently being observed in Scotland, Public Health Scotland (PHS) has returned to weekly updates to the viral respiratory dashboard from, 27 June 2024.”

” prevalence of the virus which causes COVID-19 has been increasing in wastewater detections for several weeks, accompanied by an increase in laboratory-confirmed PCR and self-reported cases. Although, COVID-19 hospital admissions have increased by 36.4%, the rate remains below the most recent peaks observed in spring and winter 2023.”

The last estimated COVID-19 infection rate was published by PHS on 14th March 2024.

However, the number of acute COVID-19 admissions to hospital is still being recorded. On the week ending 24th June in Scotland there were 410 acute COVID-19 admissions to hospital, an increase from the previous week, 302.

The figures broken down into Local Health Authorities:

Health Board of treatment	09 Jun 24	16 Jun 24	23 Jun 24
NHS Ayrshire and Arran	10	14	24
NHS Borders	6	3	9
NHS Dumfries and Galloway	1	20	17
NHS Fife	3	7	15
NHS Forth Valley	18	18	32
NHS Grampian	20	12	12
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde	63	107	107
NHS Highland	6	9	17
NHS Lanarkshire	28	41	54
NHS Lothian	30	43	73
NHS Orkney	1	1	1
NHS Shetland	2	1	1
NHS Tayside	19	23	41
NHS Western Isles	0	3	6
Golden Jubilee National Hospital	0	0	1
Scotland	207	302	410

Number of inpatients with COVID-19 in hospital (seven day average) has also increased:

Health Board of treatment	09 Jun 24	16 Jun 24	23 Jun 24
HS Ayrshire and Arran	10	17	34
NHS Borders	12	10	6
NHS Dumfries and Galloway	3	2	3
NHS Fife	8	22	21
NHS Forth Valley	28	23	32
NHS Grampian	23	28	26
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde	44	89	139
NHS Highland	12	21	22
NHS Lanarkshire	28	32	47
NHS Lothian	53	63	101
NHS Orkney	4	8	1
NHS Shetland	0	0	0
NHS Tayside	15	25	41
NHS Western Isles	0	5	8
Golden Jubilee National Hospital	0	1	2
Scotland	239	345	482

Waste water monitoring in Orkney, which represents the area covered by the Kirkwall system shows strong positive results from May this year.

Vaccination still provides the best protection against the worst effects of the virus, however, most people no longer receive it.

Sadly people continue to die from Covid, and this data is published by the National Records of Scotland. In the month of May 2024 38 people in Scotland died where Covid was mentioned as a cause; and 46 in the month of June. The majority of these deaths took place in Hospital.

Of the 38 deaths in May which mentioned Covid, Covid was the main cause in 28 of them.

Of the 46 deaths in June which mentioned Covid, Covid was the main cause in 28 of them.

Since the 9th March 2020, when the first deaths in Scotland were being officially recorded by NRS, 18,893 people have died where the virus has been mentioned on the death certificate, and in 14,850 deaths, Covid was the main cause.

The UK HSA dashboard provides data for England. Normally this would have been updated 4th July, but it will be delayed until 5th at 12pm.

“As of April 2024, in the UK, the circulating variants are a mix of JN.1 sublinages, several of which appear to be increasing in prevalence. KP.2 is one of the variants identified in the UK. We will continue to monitor these variants as the situation evolves.”

The UKHSA data dashboard recorded an increase of 33.5% in a week as at 19 June 2024: 2,815 cases of Covid, an increase of 707 from the previous week.

And what is unknown is the number of people with long Covid which continues to limit their working and personal lives. “in March 2023, an estimated 1.9 million people in the UK reported that they were experiencing long covid, representing 2.9% of the population. Of these, 1.3 million had symptoms that had lasted for more than a year and 762,000 had symptoms lasting for more than two years. Fatigue was the most common symptom (reported by 72% of those with long covid), followed by difficulty concentrating (51%), muscle ache (49%) and shortness of breath (48%).” – House of Commons Library

Fiona Grahame