Covid endemic update

but I won't welcome to today's Talk Saturday the 29th of October 2022 I want to do a bit of a covered update today now before we look at the international situation which is basically fairly encouraging we're certainly moving into a period of endemicity but before we do that I want to look at the um the clinical features that people are reporting this week so these are people that have diagnosed uh positive they've actually had a positive test for covert having become symptomatic and this is the proportion of symptoms that people are getting so if you're diagnosed positive with covert there's a 62 percent chance you'll have a sore throat 53 challenge will have a headache 53 chance you'll have a blocked nose or a runny nose at some stage in the infection with no phlegm 52 so just coughing but not bringing anything up sneezing 47 cough with phlegm productive cough 45 horse voice 43 muscle pains and aches uh 28 fatigue 22 dizzy and light headedness is 21 so we see that these are very uh classical common cold features and very difficult to tell the difference actually without a test in most cases altered sense of smell uh 20 swollen neck glands 18 these have been quite persistent the swollen neck glands a chest pain tightness 16 that's not normally really associated with the common cold so there are some differences so eyes at 16 shortness of breath down to 16 this is really important that this one's down because of course shortness of breath is one of the main reasons that people were hospitalized throughout the covert pandemic so good to see that that one's well down uh lots of smell 16 earache 15 joint shoulder pain 11 and chills or Shivers uh 10 so they are the features that people are suffering from now we're still not minimizing this in the UK there was 825 people died uh last week or the last seven or eight days seven days as of yesterday uh after 28 within 28 days of a covid test so we're still not minimizing this but for the vast majority of people we've got a presentation that's similar to a common cold now for the majority now let's just look at some data here this is the international situation now these These are confirmed cases now these are basically so little testing it's not worth spending time on these really but that's the figures there but all of the official testing rates are currently pretty low hospital patients of course is a much better measure so these are number of covid-19 pages in hospital per million people and the United Kingdom is highest although we just have seen a bit of a downtick in the UK this green line here is the United States which of course was very high so remarkably good news to see that the number of hospitalizations in the United States is is well down on what it was because more and more people are developing immunity in the United States and getting less severe illness still some problems in the United States because there's so many comorbidities so not saying the problem's gone away but certainly as we see from this graphic much much less than it was and good to see that Australia's uh bottom of the pile there now um these are deaths now the United Kingdom the deaths here in the United Kingdom of course are are uh there's been a data drop out here so the United Kingdom is probably about highest at the moment um United States Ireland Australia Netherlands in that order for a number of people dying of uh of covert 19. now of course we can't do direct comparisons because different countries are testing obviously different countries are testing differently but anyway let's go and look at some more Zoe data now this one here is really quite interesting this is the people with uh common colds in Orange and people with covert colds in blue so we see that if you've got common cold symptoms as we've just looked at in the UK it's more likely at the moment well considerably more likely that you've got a common cold rather than you've got covered but we do see that both of them are coming down at the moment now these are the new daily cases in the UK thankfully we see these are coming down as well we haven't gone anything like these previous Omicron Peaks that we were worried about so this is pretty good news and the only thing that explains this to me really is increasing Community immunity uh this is the this is the extrapolated data for the number of people in the United Kingdom who would have covert and again we see that mirrors it very accurately and the numbers starting to come down not saying it's going down quickly it's kind of drifting down slowly but it is going down which is good news this is symptomatic covert of course across the UK home Nations now we have fluctuations now there's a fluctuation here where Northern Ireland is much higher but the problem is that there's not many people uh put putting in the Zoe data in Northern Ireland so you tend to get more fluctuations because there's a smaller overall number but basically we're seeing that the pandemic is equally affecting all of the UK is why I'm sharing that slide much the same for the English regions we could point out some differences here but basically this is affecting all of the country in much the same way age ranges is interesting so this blue here is the younger age group so there's not just 17s here so they went back to school got lots of infections developed some immunity but now they're picking up again in terms of covert as are the 18 to 34s so we are seeing some increase to some leveling off in the younger age group and under 34s but thankfully in the more at risk age groups we're seeing a significant reduction so the red there is the 55 to 74. the purple there is the over uh 75s and their incidences are going down that they're having less and of course this means that in the next few weeks we're going to have lower amounts of hospitalization because these are the at more at risk significantly more at risk populations long covered um this is basically rising and falling with the incidence of covid here but of course the the data scientists and Tim Spector last week that we talked to do point out this is based on risks that are estimated in 2021 so this is a worst case scenario but I think we can say that some people are still developing long covered I think we can still say that fairly safely and that's consistent with ons data as well this is this is people with uh common colds that aren't covered and again we can see it went up and down in younger groups um but slightly lower down now all together so thankfully hopefully less people sniffling in the UK at the moment and that was that and slide of that data so very interesting I'll put the link to the whole report all there gives us a prevalence in the UK at the moment of uh about 1 in 24 from the from the Zoe data download the full report anyway moving on to the office of national statistics data um one in 24 symptomatic the ons data which is more behind the times is showing about one in 30 people currently infected in England now this is based on survey data so this is accurate so we see that in England um this will be up till the end of the the up till last week um one in 31 in 35 people with covert so we still see there's actually a very high prevalence plenty people still have coverage so there's a lot of it around but thankfully less people getting ill again consistent with my argument that we are moving very very much into the endemicity period and this is going to go on for some time in fact pretty soon we won't be reporting this data because it won't matter too much but it's interesting to look at it seeing it's all still available England cases percentage testing positive leveling out and next week we can say with some confidence that that will be down a bit again based on the Zoe data and I'm hopeful it's going to keep going down so in terms of covid this winter I'm less worried than I was well certainly way less worried than I was at this time last year the big unknown of course is how many people are going to get influenza that's still the big unknown at the moment now I just want to show you some ons data here this is pretty interesting now what this is what this graphic here is doing it's a bit complicated but I think we can we can work it out so um what the taking here is this line here is uh the sort of reference line and this is the covid-19 vaccine stage status and this is referencing people who've who've had uh 14 to 18 days after their third dose of vaccine so that's their line there so anyone on this side is more likely to get infections than these people who've had um in terms of getting infections it's not not saying how sick they'll get any on this side is more likely to get infected and I know on this side is less likely to get infected so we see that everyone is more likely to get a an infection or a re-infection very often um after compared to people that have been vaccinated within 14 to 89 days so these are people that are unvaccinated here that's their risk so they've got a slightly increased risk but what really grabbed me about this is more than 90 days after the second vaccine you've actually got a higher incidence of reinfection than you have if you're unvaccinated and more than 90 days after the third dose of vaccine there you've actually got a higher risk nearly two times the risk not quite but about one but one one point eight one time point nine times the risk as opposed to just about 1.1 times the risk if you're unvaccinated so um I had my last vaccine self-disclosure time I had my last covered vaccine on the 27th of October 2021 which of course is is a year a year and uh two days ago so um that means I'm actually now more at risk of getting reinfected than if I hadn't been vaccinated according to this data with reference to um people that had had the vaccine 14 to 89 days ago um interesting um interesting we'll leave it at that um now um self-reported long covered um quite a lot really 2.3 million people 3.5 of the UK population um 80 of this 2.3 million symptoms for at least um at least uh 12 weeks 40 at least one year 22 at least two years so quite a lot of people with long term ongoing long covered this is a problem fatigue difficulty concentrate Insurance of breath muscle ache are the most common features and it affected day-to-day activity in 1.6 million people that's 72 percent of the 2.3 million now I personally know several people of course who are suffering from long covered type symptoms and you will as well the situation is pretty similar in the states um so there's no question that this long covet is a serious issue um if there's anyone out there who doesn't know anyone who has long covered problems do let me know because I think most of us have got quite a few friends in that category at the moment and um other issues as well I I'm curious to why my blood pressure went up last year I had low blood pressure all my life and then it just went up all of a sudden I'd start blood pressure meds no you just get the feeling it was so such an acute change um could that have had a specific cause did my diet change for example not that I'm aware of am I doing less exercise well not as much as I'd like to but hasn't really changed so um just get the quest the feeling there's questions to be answered around the country anyway um now this is this this graphic here we've been keeping an eye on this this is very interesting people admitted uh with covert to hospital or Fork over so did they just happen to have it when they were admitted or were they admitted for the purposes of covert and what we see is the majority um so this is the 50 that's 100 so we see that the majority here were admitted coincidentally with covert although we do see the amount that I've admitted four covert has increased slightly didn't get a precise figure on that looks about 40 percent to me so we can say we can say that a rough in rough figures 60 of people with covert in hospital is coincidental forty percent it's for covert that's um that's good and of course some people contract covert in Hospital of course uh um acute care intensive care situation um I that should be ICU really Intensive Care Unit um so here we see that's the 50 there that's the hundred percent there so we see that most people here are admitted to uh intensive care who have covered most of them it's an incidental finding now this is really good news because it means there is very few people being admitted to intensive care for covered completely different to the peak of the alpha or Delta for example particularly the alpha now excess deaths now I've got more to say on this I'm going to do in a separate video um because this just seems to be everywhere but excess deaths not quite everywhere Europe um the United States less so actually at the moment although they've had a lot of Death Note the thing is with the excess deaths you'd actually expect deaths given that a lot of the vulnerable people have died over the pandemic sadly um from covid um another conditions for example not being accessed medical treatment you would expect most of the vulnerable population really not to be with us sadly anymore so you'd expect I would expect I'm sure you would expect the excess deaths the deaths above the five-year average to be less than expected because the vulnerable population has largely uh passed away the opposite is what we see so in the UK deaths registered for the weekend in the 14th of October 13 000. 253 not surprising sadly people die we are a transient population on the surface of this planet of course and this is what we expect but from years of data we know roughly how many people should be dying and we are way above that 14.9 above the five-year average 1719 excess deaths now why this isn't being talked about just imagine that there was a terrorist strike or some tragic or natural disaster a tsunami or an earthquake in the UK and 1719 people had died the Press would be all over that like a rash and on these success deaths you hear virtually nothing on the mainstream media um suspicious people would become suspicious as to why they're so silent about it or just imagine there was a road traffic accident where where a thousandth of that died and 17 people died they'll be all over that like massive coverage but yet 1719 people have died who we wouldn't expect to die in the UK and we're here essentially diddly squat for mainstream media this is very surprising and deaths involved in copied 19 were only 4.7 well I say only 14 4.7 but we know quite a few of those were deaths with rather than from and um I'm just going to show you the uh the graphic from the office of national statistics on this this is the UK graphic now you're probably familiar with this now the excess deaths here in blue were from covid of course we expect that the dotted line is the five-year average we would expect and if we look at the most recent uh situation here uh which I can yeah there we go this is the most recent situation here so what we're seeing is this is the five-year average these are weekly bars uh this is the five-year average these are data dropouts of course for bank holidays and such like um these are the covert deaths so all these deaths in green above the five-year average are unexplained uh excess deaths to the tune of in the UK 1 719 excess deaths in the UK in a week this is um to me this is huge and people don't seem to be talking about it too much now just before we finish we'll look at some UK data from the official website let's go with Healthcare first of all so uh thankfully we are seeing the numbers are starting to go down so these are patients admitted to hospital here and if we look at the last uh that's the last six months so that's the last three months so we are seeing a reducing Trend people actually they're the breakdowns by age obviously I put the link to this site patients in hospital again thankfully in the last month we are starting to see a downward Trend last three months there it's more obvious obviously it takes time for the people to be discharged because some will be retained due to complications and people on mechanical ventilators well um that was when uh we noticed that went down dramatically when um Omicron came along so that's kind of the start of the Year there it went down and thankfully it stayed down throughout the Omicron era way lower than it was in previous uh previous waves that's the data for the last year so basically Omicron came along about here and since Omicron came along it's done nothing but go down with a few okay there's been very large numbers of Omicron cases there and uh even though Omicron is sending far fewer people to the Intensive Care the sheer numbers of people getting infected in this in this time period um in this era meant that there were some admissions but way way lower if we look at that in the context of the whole the whole pandemic deaths in the UK as we've said not gone away um so um let's look at uh death certificates by date of death well we're still rumbling along at this low level I mean nothing like we were in the in the Peaks these are these are uh covert deaths of course um and oh this is that this is the weekly deaths with coven on the death certificate by date registered so again we saw the Peaks and we are a lot lower so the the these are saying when so the last one there is 532. um not necessarily they died from covert but covert was involved in that death but many of those would be um dying with covid not necessarily dying from covered so there we go I'm gonna I'm gonna look at the this excess death figures really it's 1719 is huge and similar situations in Europe um we really need answers to this so anyway uh pandemic wise uh drifting very slowly into this period of endemicity which I'm afraid is going to be with us for some time big or no for the winter is influenza that could potentially uh Palm killed quite a few people over over winter we don't know how that was going to shape up yet it's looking not too bad so far but I'm fairly confident from this data that kovid's going to keep drifting down at least till mid-winter we can't really say what it's going to do next January February we really can't say that but from the data we have now I think we can with not with confidence but with a degree of expectation I think we can hope that it's going to keep drifting down for November December we shall see and thank you very much for watching

Channel: Dr. John Campbell

Views: 451,467

Keywords: physiology, nursing, NCLEX, health, disease, biology, medicine, nurse education, medical education, pathophysiology, campbell, human biology, human body

Id: BY8eWsvdQjk

Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 29 2022