Latest Covid situation 17 November 2023

A rundown of the latest numbers on Covid including autumn booster campaign, hospitalisations, deaths, variants, respiratory infections this autumn & the situation in some other countries. You can watch me present these at today’s Indie SAGE briefing. Thank you to Bob Hawkins for helping with many of the slides.

Autumn booster campaign

Uptake among eligible groups is plateauing at around 50% in England. Coverage is highest in older age groups, with 68% of over 65’s boosted in England. Uptake is lower in the devolved nations and lowest in Wales. All nations have seen significant drops in uptake compared to last year’s booster programme, with the largest drop in Scotland.

Wales (pictured) and Scotland both provide breakdowns of uptake by type of eligibilty. Both countries show disappointingly low uptake among clinical risk groups and in health and care home staff. This pattern is almost certainly the same in England and NI, even if the precise percentages differ. As we’ve seen throughout the pandemic, there remain marked differences in uptake by deprivation.

Hospital Admissions & Deaths

Admissions with Covid in England have been falling over the past several weeks - this is good news! Scottish hospital admissions show a similar pattern and luckily Scotland also has wastewater monitoring. This also shows a recent drop, so the drop in hospital admissions seems a response to both the autumn booster and a reduction in circulating virus - both are good news.

I do want to highlight the continuing number of admissions in 0-5 year olds though. Unlike older children, admissions in 0-5s remain relatively high - as high as they’ve been throughout the pandemic apart from a terrible 2022 which was the first year of Omicron. These higher coninuing admissions are likely for two reasons: most under 5’s are not eligible for a Covid vaccination (despite a safe vaccine being available and approved by MHRA) and they are the age group least likely to have had a previous infection.

Deaths from Covid are flattening in England and Wales and we will see falls in the coming weeks in response to vaccination & falling prevalence.

Variants

The majority of variants circulating in England are Omicron XBB, which have been dominant now for months, with different substrains battling it out for supremacy. The new, very different, variant BA.2.86 (“Pirola”), that popped up globally in August is growing (now about 13% of sequenced cases) but pretty slowly and luckily is proving less worrying that it first seemed.

If you have cold symptoms, it’s most likely a cold - but still worth testing!

Data from UKHSA respiratory virus surveillance shows that at the moment Rhinovirus and RSV (both cause cold symptoms) are circulating and are more common that Covid. So if you have common cold sysmptoms, it’s most likely a common cold. However, there is still plenty of Covid around so definitely worth testing! There is still very little Flu around.

Flu levels are not just lower, but also much lower than last year at this stage. While I’m sure we will get a flu wave, hopefully it will be lower than last year’s devastating one which helped bring the NHS to its knees in December 2022. With any luck we will avoid last year’s triple whammy of a Covid, Flu and RSV wave all at the same time.

International situation

I just wanted to highlight rapidly rising prevalence and admissions in Finland and Sweden. Both countries are seeing large spikes in their wastewater monitoring and also large spikes in Covid hospital admissions.

There don’t seem to be any new variants circulating in either country and there is no obvious explanation for these rapid increases that I know of - so I am higlighting these just as a reminder that Covid still has plenty of potential to surprise us and cause significant waves.

Summary

Autumn boosters are underway and overall uptake in England is plateauing at around 50%. Uptake is lower in the devolved nations and lower than last year for all nations.

Covid hospitalisations have been falling steadily over the last few weeks and deaths should soon follow over the coming weeks. The ONS Covid infection survey’s winter study (using lateral flow tests instead of PCR tests) starts around now and first results should be available in early December to give an idea of prevalence - good news and I just wish it had never ended!