UK COVID data, week starting 7th November 2022

Trying not to lose the plot(s)

Here’s an attempt to round up the week’s COVID data as it comes in.

(8.30am 10/11/22) The latest weekly hospital admission data has been released by NHS England, and it’s still fairly encouraging, but perhaps with a faint cloud on the horizon.

That is, first of all, the main headline is there has been another overall fall. The seven day average is now down to 533, which is comparable with the levels seen in previous troughs. We have to be slightly careful, because the testing regime isn’t the same as previously, so you can’t necessarily assume that this means things are as low as they were before. However, three or four weeks ago the seven day average was 1,200, and the testing regime hasn’t changed too much since then. So that’s definitely good!

The slight cloud on the horizon is whether things are once again starting to flatten out. It’s possible that based on the variant percentages (and specifically the way that Level 5 and 6 variants are outgrowing the lower levels) that this might be an early sign of another variant-driven uptick.

You can see from the admissions ratio graph that the rate of falling is higher than it was last week (albeit higher than what was an incredibly low level), so that feels like one to keep an eye on.

(8:15pm: 10/11/22) Dashboard data now updated as well - and definitely encouraging news there too - cases continuing to be somewhere around “2 week halving” on the case ratio plot, which given that this might be expected to be a leading indicator suggests that nothing too concerning is happening right now.

And, at the opposite end of the lag spectrum, a clear peak and decline on the death data too - with a peak at a lower level than previous waves.

(Midday 11/11/22) As expected (based on lags), a nice drop on the ONS to round off the week’s data. But good to see some falls in the most recently vaccinated age groups (boosters from age 50 upwards) in the plots by age.