Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

^ ^^ This is the relevant thread

https://twitter.com/chrisceohopson/status/1475540046677790723?s=21

up thread there was mention of rise in hospitalisations of under 5s (i think). are those cases also incidental, as per someone else’s comment, or are these children badly sick with covid?

So what is happening in South Africa?

A slow but steady increase in admissions and deaths which they are hoping will peak imminently, but obviously far below the Delta wave. (assuming that the dip last week was the usual annual festive admissions dip). There has also been a significant increase in excess deaths representing a possibility that people are dying of Covid outside of hospitals (but not in massive numbers).

The main focus of Omicron study in SA right now is trying to figure out why 10% of all Omicron admissions with severe disease are in toddlers.

are those cases also incidental, as per someone else’s comment, or are these children badly sick with covid?

In SA, they are mostly not incidental. I have no idea about elsewhere.

Thanks for reply on SA. As a parent the seemingly increased risk to children is worrying. It also reinforces the view that these mutations have given us a very different virus.

that answers my Q more or less even if you weren’t replying to my post: thanks

Really sorry to hear about your friend who passed, and hope your colleague's recovery continues.

Had "cold like symptoms" on Christmas day. Did an LFT and it came back as covid. Feeling pretty much fine now, apart from my throat which is still extremely painful.

@Stonehedge I am still genuinely interested to know what you think about South Africa? That the data is wrong? That they haven’t reached peak yet? That it isn’t relevant to us because of demographics / prior immunity / something else?

Not sure how much my personal opinion is worth on this, but in a nutshell:

Cases have peaked but admissions and deaths are still trickling upwards. Lots more kids ending up in hospital. Significant rise in excess deaths. Covid deaths have increased x10 since the Omicron wave started in week 47. Even taking these into account its clear that they are doing a lot better than in Delta wave. That said, they also had an excess death rate of over 400 per 100k in the Delta wave which is indicative of the fact that SA had amongst the higest infection rate for Delta of any country in the world, leading to decent levels of natural immunity which has helped with Omicron. The suggestion is that while their young poopulation is still as young as it was for Delta, a lot of the most vulnerable people in those brackets died from Covid.

So yes...much lower admissions and deaths than Delta. However, the numbers there indicate that if we have even 50% of their situation, the NHS is at risk of being overwhelmed.

Really sorry to hear about your friend who passed, and hope your colleague's recovery continues.

Thanks mate.

Thank you. Can I ask what is your definition of NHS being over whelmed?

Cases according to Grauniad graph increased by 6000, last week's it was 30K for two weeks.

But with schools closed and people mixing less / time off work I don't know if we are over the peak... might be ok now then 2 into weeks in January we get a spike again.

Can I ask what is your definition of NHS being over whelmed?

1) Cancellation of primary care and secondary care apps and procedures for vaccine rollout and Covid treatments. (TICK, across the whole NHS)
2) Not enough staff to safely man wards (TICK, albeit in small pockets right now. )
3) Increase in with or for Covid admissions, leading to Covid isolation wards expanding and reducing ward capacity in other areas. (TICK)

Thanks also for this. I think we have to accept 1 and 3 up to a point, to avoid further schools closures, for example.

Obviously in a just world we wouldn’t need to decide whether to prioritise health or education.

To be fair, until recently I have been working with a panel of epidemiologists, doctors and virologists to use neural networks to forecast Omicron in various US states...

Neural networks make predictions based on data fed to them. Was there any data being used that was particularly interesting/novel? If it's too early to say anything about the impact of Omicron because there's not enough data that'll also be true for our (your) ability to assess a model - as training data will be incomplete - no?

Neural networks make predictions based on data fed to them. Was there any data being used that was particularly interesting/novel? If it's too early to say anything about the impact of Omicron because there's not enough data that'll also be true for our (your) ability to assess a model - as training data will be incomplete - no?

You're bang on the money there. It'll likely be two or three months before there is enough data to be useful to the models. We were just setting up a few early so that we can keep an eye on predictions as the data improves.

With the Delta wave, it was about three months before the data matured enough to be useful.

My opinions aren't related to what the (currently useless) ML models show.

Was there any data being used that was particularly interesting/novel?

Sorry, missed this. Yes. Thats basically the majority of what we've been doing. Collating data sources and studying them to get a better idea how to use them and feed them into the models.

Cases have peaked

really?

In SA. Looks that way.

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You are aware this was with reference to Gauteng?

I was talking about the whole of SA.

My opinions aren't related to what the (currently useless) ML models show.

Seemed they may be as you've mentioned it a couple of times and I couldn't work out what the contribution actually was.

Collating data sources and studying them to get a better idea how to use them and feed them into the models.

"Big data" meets "black box". (Not really having a go - this is what a large segment of research in my field does to some extent).

In South Africa, since week 47, which is when Omicron took hold there, there has been a x6 increase in hospital admissions, a 50% increase in overall excess deaths (over 200% in one region in one particular week) and over x9 increase in Covid deaths. Admissions and death rates are looking to be slowing but numbers are still increasing (with usual caveat about xmas week figures being unreliable).

Its nothing like it was for Delta. I don't think anybody tries to argue that. I just think that given those increases you can't really say that Omicron in SA has been a nothing burger.

Nope.
Life moves pretty fast.

Who said it was a ‘nothing burger’?