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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have released the latest headline results from their COVID-19 Infection Survey.
Prof Christina Pagel, Professor of Operational Research, UCL, said:
“This wave has seen more people infected than at any previous time in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland – and that includes the first December/January Omicron wave. We are close to January’s peak in England and likely to surpass it next week.
“Almost 1 in 10 people in Scotland have Covid right now – this is ridiculously high. While vaccines and previous infection is blunting severe disease and death, the sheer numbers of people infected are still seriously stressing health systems – both in terms of patients and staff off sick. We’re seeing renewed mass disruption in schools – for the third or fourth time this academic year.
“What worries me is that we are not even talking about the potential long term consequences of so many people being ill – and not just once, but repeatedly. Just in the last few weeks there has been research showing higher risk of heart problems in the year following infection, significant MRI-confirmed multi organ impairment in those with long covid, increased risk of new onset diabetes, and elevated all-cause mortality in the year following from the UK Biobank study. While vaccines will likely reduce some of this burden, it is unlikely to reduce all.
“Accepting these frequent waves of high infections with no attempt at mitigation risks degrading the long term health of our population”
Prof Sheila Bird, Formerly Programme Leader, MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, said:
“Today’s headline figures from the ONS Community Infection Survey (top row in the table below) contain now-strong evidence, as I forewarned based on age-specific prevalences to 9 February 2022, that the percentage of those in the community aged 50-69 years and also 70+ years testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 has risen significantly between 26 January and 2 February 2022 to 3.0% and 2.5% respectively after hitherto a steady decline from peak prevalence of 5.2% and 3.1% at 3 or 12 January 2022. A near-doubling has since occurred.
Proportion testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 in the two older age-groups rose to 5.6% at 16 March 2022 for citizens (such as me) aged 50-69 years and to 5.0% for 70+ year olds – worryingly higher, for this oldest age-group, than in any week since Omicron (BA.1 or BA.2) achieved dominance in UK.
“There is continued need to protect our elderly citizens.”
Prof Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, The Open University, said:
“There’s not much to be happy about in this week’s release from the admirable ONS Covid-19 Infection Survey (CIS). The one real good point is that ONS believe that the number of people who would test positive in Northern Ireland for the most recent week (ending 19 March) has decreased compared to the week before. But the estimates there are still high, and estimated numbers testing positive rose in the other three UK countries, in every region of England, and for every one of the age groups that ONS use for their analysis in England. The latest week’s estimates are the highest since the CIS began in both Wales and Scotland, and there has only ever been one week higher than this week’s England estimate.
“I’ll comment mainly, though on a point I mentioned last week about the incidence estimates – the CIS estimates for the numbers of new infections. For technical reasons these can’t be as up to date as the positivity estimates. The latest available figures are ‘official’ estimates up the week ending 5 March, and ‘modelled’ estimates that go up to 9 March. Incidence is harder to estimate than positivity on a survey like this, so the margins of error are quite wide. But the total of the estimates of new cases for the UK for the week ending 9 March is about 3.1 million. That’s about a million higher than the estimate for the previous week.
“These incidence estimates of new infections are the ones that should correspond most closely to the estimates of new confirmed cases on the Government dashboard. (The CIS positivity estimates don’t just include new infections, but also infections that might have been going on for some time, whereas the dashboard new cases figures are only for new cases.) You wouldn’t expect the CIS incidence (new infections) estimates to match the dashboard new case figures exactly. That’s because many asymptomatic infections wouldn’t show up on the dashboard, because people without symptoms would be a lot less likely to be tested. But you might expect the general trends to be the same, and that has roughly been the case in the past – but only up till about mid-January. Before that, the ONS estimates of new infections were usually between two and three times the dashboard new confirmed cases. But since mid-January that’s been changing. In the week ending 9 March, the dashboard showed about 380,000 new cases across the UK, which is only about one in eight of the ONS estimate of 3.1 million new infections in the same week.
“I suspect that this change in the relationship between the two sets of figures is largely because the number of people being tested routinely, who provide the dashboard figures, has fallen a lot since the start of 2022 (though it has risen, slowly, since early March). But if people aren’t being tested, or aren’t reporting the results, then the trends in dashboard case rates aren’t going to reflect what’s really going on in the country in terms of infections. That’s exactly why we need the ONS survey – it isn’t affected by that issue, because people are tested, regardless of symptoms, just to estimate how the pandemic is developing.”
Prof James Naismith, Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, and Professor of Structural Biology, University of Oxford, said:
“Today’s ONS release covering the period to 19th March tend to support my view that the BA.2 strain of omicron will find and infect those susceptible to infection. The ONS data have proven to be the most reliable guide to virus.
“Politicians at the UK and devolved levels have all decided as a practical matter to let the virus spread through the population. This can be seen in the continuing rise everywhere (except Northern Ireland, but the numbers are uncertain) and across age groups.
“There is no sign yet the virus has peaked in terms of infections.
“For every 100 people in Scotland, 9 would have tested positive at some in the previous week. The virus is incredibly fit and certainly whatever differential control measures are in place posses only, but no doubt valuable, rhetorical value. I would expect the numbers in England to follow Scotland.
“The sheer scale of the infection is now pressuring the health service but the combination of vaccination, improved treatments and the less severe nature of Omicron means for the vast majority of those infected this will not be life threatening.
“This wave will burn out simply by infecting all those who can be infected. Given the clear benefits of vaccination in avoid severe illness, I would advocate getting your first, second or third jag today and for those offered a fourth grab the opportunity.
“The vaccines are a triumph of science, I hope the public will support the investment in science that is necessary for this work to happen in the UK.
“Long covid is a poorly understood serious problem for a portion of those infected. I hope that the combination of vaccination and the less severe nature of Omicron means it is less severe, but this is a hope not data.
“Social restrictions bought us the time to vaccinate the population. It is political choice whether saving lives of people today was worth the cost.
“What is dishonest is to pretend that having no severe social restrictions would not have lead to much higher death tolls. Anyone in doubt can look at the trajectory we were on in the two most deadly waves and look just how fast the virus can spread without restrictions. Whether social restrictions are achieved voluntarily or by law does not matter to the virus, all that matters is how many uninfected people come into contact with an infectious person.”
Dr Stephen Griffin, Associate Professor in the School of Medicine, University of Leeds, said:
“The recent ONS survey confirms that the combination of the BA2 Omicron sub-variant and the relaxation of restrictions is causing a massive resurgence of infection across the UK. Hospitalisations are almost back to the peak seen in January, deaths are again increasing and, worryingly, the age-related spread of infections is extending to include older groups. The widespread disruption in schools is unacceptable, as is the risk to clinically vulnerable people and the associated increase in long COVID that will follow. As ever, the most disadvantaged groups will suffer most.
“Blinding ourselves to this level of harm does not constitute living with a virus infection, quite the opposite. Public health has seemingly dropped dramatically on the list of this Government’s priorities, to the detriment of the UK population as a whole. The frustration at the lack of mitigations that could so easily curtail this surge is tangible for many; without sufficient vaccination, ventilation, masking, isolation and testing, we will continue to “live with” disruption, disease and sadly, death, as a result. If the Government continues to ignore advice from (now foolishly disbanded) SAGE, independent SAGE, and WHO, we as a nation will sadly reap what they have sown.”
https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveyuk25march2022
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:
www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19
Declared interests
Prof Kevin McConway: “I am a Trustee of the SMC and a member of its Advisory Committee. My quote above is in my capacity as an independent professional statistician.”
Dr Stephen Griffin: “Member of Independent SAGE.”
No others received.