Quick update on Covid in England. Plus manifestos!

Modest May wave over, but likely to be another wave this month. Plus a quick look at the party manifestos.

What happened in May?

The monthly update of hospital admissions with Covid has been published by NHS England today. It shows the clear wave in May, but also shows that it was smaller than the autumn and winter waves. [Note: yes hospitals are testing less than they were, but their testing protocols have been pretty constant over the last year].

The May wave was likely driven by a combination of waning immunity and the growth of the KP.2 coronavirus variant (a child of JN.1 which caused the Christmas 2023 wave). The wave is also visible in weekly registered deaths, but again the number of deaths were much lower than the previous two waves.

Covid’s impact will have been (thankfully) blunted by many of the most vulnerable receiving a Spring Vaccine Booster, particularly those in care homes, although coverage in the immunosuppressed remains worryingly low.

What’s next?

However, there are hints in the most recent data to end of May that admissions may be rising again. We also know that the KP.3 subvariant (a more rapidly spreading sister to KP.2) is growing in the UK (estimated at about 30% of sequenced tests by the end of May). I don’t know whether the KP.3 wave will be bigger than the KP.2 May wave, but I am pretty sure that it will cause another wave making this summer a more Covid-prevalent summer than last year where June and July were very quiet months.

That said, we can perhaps look to countries ahead of us on the KP.3 curve for clues. One of these is Portugal where about two thirds of their sequenced cases are KP.3 and they are experiencing a surge in both cases and hospitalisations.

Another example is California where KP.3 is dominant and which is currently seeing a surge in wastewater detected Coronavirus and in hospitalisations.

We sadly (and shamefully) do not have wastewater monitoring in England. However Scotland wastewater monitoring shows (modest) increases to the 6 June, which are also reflected in Scottish hospital admissions. Eslewhere in Europe, Belgium and Denmark are seeing definite increases in wastewater signals but the picture is more mixed elsewhere.

My overall feeling is that we should definitely expect a June covid wave, bigger than May but hopefully not as big as the JN.1 winter wave. And as ever, it’s not just the impact on acute illness that matters, but also Long Covid (e.g. my substack from April). There is still far too little available in the way of treatment, and each new wave leads to more people living with this potentially debilitating condition.

Please do accept any booster offer you are offered - even if the Covid boosters are based on variants that do not precisely match the current circulating variants, they still provide a great deal more protection than not getting vaccinated at all!

Prof Sheena Cruickshank also offers an update on future Covid-19 vaccines in her recent substack.

Manifesto!

This week has seen the release of the UK party manifestos. It was really encouraging to see both the Greens and the Liberal Democrats commit to implementing a Clean Air Act. The Liberal Democrats go further and also commit to implementing “a post-pandemic strategy for supporting people who are immunocompromised” and learning more broadly from the country’s experiences of the pandemic.

Labour’s manifesto does not mention indoor air quality or cleaner air, but it does commit to implementing the findings from the Covid-19 Inquiry - which could include such measures and hopefully a whole host of other measures designed to improve the country’s resilience to future pandemics.

The Conservatives mention neither indoor air quality nor the Covid-19 Inquiry. Instead, they praise their pandemic record (!) and commit to supporting the NHS recovery. They do however discuss developing a National Defence and Resilience Plan which includes pandemics in its remit and to use “learnings from Covid to improve the country’s preparedness for risks on the National Risk Register”.

So from a purely Covid-19 perspective (and thinking also about the potential for avian flu (H5N1) to cause a devastating pandemic relatively soon!), there are some things to celebrate in the Liberal Democrat and Green Party manifestos. Labour says little about it but if it actually did implement the findings of the Covid-19 Inquiry in full, that would be a substantial improvement. The Conservatives don’t commit to anything specific and so it is difficult to say much positive about their plans in respect of Covid-19 or future pandemics.