As it is a Wednesday, just a quick update.
I think we can ignore today's big number of deaths as it always high on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Deaths by date of death surpassed the wave 1 peak on 12 January and are only likely to be revised up from there. Again, that isn't that accurate either, as testing was lower in wave 1, so they are only higher on the official definition. In reality, we are probably a bit below wave 1 peak still. 1,100 UK Covid deaths in a day (1,000 for England alone) is still pretty shocking as I was hopeful we could keep it below 500 when we went into that mini lockdown in November.
Cases are much brighter; cases per day are now consistently lower than the ones 7 day previously (the last exception was the 8 January and that was compared to New Year's Day).
Hospital Admissions appear to have turned down, but at worst they are level. There is still a lot of daily fluctuation, but there should be a clear downward trend by next week.
Vaccinations went above 300k yesterday, which I think was the target. If they go on like that, the deaths are going to start falling soon enough. Deaths must be close to their peak anyway right now, given the effect of lockdown on cases and admissions.
Finally, I read the BBC saying there was no evidence of a Christmas increase in cases. I think there was a small blip that is hard to see as the cases were volatile because of the bank holiday. It is pretty clear the cases were still increasing into the New Year and started falling soon after lockdown. I think most people were restrained at Christmas and they probably did the right thing.
Wednesday again.
Get the bad news out of the way. Deaths were still rising on the 19 January, which is 8 days ago. I think there is every chance that will be the peak for this wave, as the growth rate has been slowing and the days after are sufficiently lower that they are unlikely to catch up after the lag has worked its way completely through. I think it is much more likely that this is due to lockdown than vaccinations. The vaccinations didn't really kick off in volume until the New Year so it is unlikely to have had any noticeable effect yet (the effect of vaccination is noticeable after about 11 days with the Pfizer vaccine and there is a 3 week lag from infection to death).
Hospitalisations are definitely dropping now, the level is down to around 3,000 a day from 4,000 at peak and the total number of people with Covid in hospital has begun to fall (it is only 5% down from the peak).
Cases are now falling at a faster rate than last week, with cases a week ago down around 50% from their peak around the New Year; Cummins is claiming that this was due to them deliberately targetting lockdowns at the known peak in the cases curve. You'd think it they knew enough to time it that well, they'd know enough to save the 100k lives wouldn't you Ivor?
Vaccination numbers have been doing brilliantly, there was a fall at the weekend, but they hit nearly 500,000 a day at the end of last week.
I hope they don't f it up again with a rush to reopen too soon, but think things are looking good for the UK right now.
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