Another weekly update
Deaths are down again this week from 64 to 55 (week to 12 May, England only). It is 14%, but at these levels a couple of deaths either way would make it 10% or near 20%, so I can't really say the improvement is slowing.
Hospitalisations. They are still just over 100 a day. There seems to be some slowing here, which is probably just a reflection of the levelling off in cases over the last 2 or 3 weeks. I read something the other day saying that the majority of hospitalisations are now amongst the unvaccinated. I haven't checked it, but it seems plausible. If true there is a massive difference in Covid outcomes between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Vaccination rates are so high in the UK now with over 95% of the other 55s have had at least one dose, and 90% of those over 70 have had two).
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E1aLtyXUUAY-PrQ?format=png&name=900x900 Finally cases. i don't think there is much evidence either way whether cases are going up or down with levels still around 2,000 a day 1 Zoe App is reporting an R of 1.1, but also has cases as about 2,000 a day.
Meanwhile, Clare Path is reporting that all cases are "false positive" and have been for some time
https://twitter.com/ClareCraigPath/status/1394647083207077888/photo/1. Weird how Australia has a "false positive rate" of only 0.2% this week and that the only "false positives" in the last 7 days are from people who have just arrived there. It is almost as if they aren't false positives at all.
I don't see any very worrying signs right now, and drinking booze is probably OK anywhere in the UK.
Given it is past Wednesday. I am going to do an update.
I am thinking this will be the last slightly positive update for a while.
Deaths halved in the week up to 19 May, but it is very unlikely they will go lower, as the provisional figures look higher going forward.
Hospitalisations. They did drop beloe 100 for 3 days, but have been stubbornly above 100 every day since the 17 May.
Cases. The cases are now above 3,000 a day for the first time since the first week in April.
Vaccinations have been holding up though with a steadily increasing trend in both first and second vaccinations.
I think it is all about the hotpsots now. You can actually see the data at hospital level; and as an example Bedfordshire is getting 2 hospitalisations a day right now versus 25 a day at the beginning of February. Bolton is getting 5 a day vs 24 at the beginning of February. You can see on the visualisations that the mean age of each patient is much lower now and they are more likely to be vaccinated than not (even if more than half are not vaccinated as is claimed). So even in the hotspots we aren't going to be seeing deaths at the levels we saw earlier in the year anytime soon.
I think it is pretty clear now that the dominant Indian variant is probably about 50% more transmissible than the Kent variant, but I don't think we know enough about how likely it is to kill us. I have read that the first vaccine dose offers less protecion than before, but they think you get similar levels of protection after two vaccinations. Overall deaths are unlikely to be much more than 10% of previous levels.
So overall, there are some worrying signs, but don't think we should worry too much.
For more into, John Burns Murdoch has done some good work on the Indian variant here
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1397995466701344769.