Hospital admissions

Keeping the cases as low as possible through summer will mean we are lower down on the curve going into autumn and winter. Furthermore they want to keep hospital numbers down in the summer to try and catch up with the severe backlog of non-covid work.

It is not as simple as 'understanding the point at which we can live with this'. You cannot say right we are at '20,000 daily cases (for example) so we need to keep things a bit tighter. The rate of infections, hospitalisations and death on any given day is determined by the action taken or not taken several weeks previous.

In addition to this it is much much easier to control infections, hospitalisations and deaths whilst the rate of growth is low. This is especially true given that the delta variant has an r-value of around 6. If you have not read up on exponential growth this video explains it well.


I know what exponential growth is, ta. It’s possibly growing exponentially now in terms of cases (but relatively few are dying or even getting ill who are vaccinated - aware that will change if cases double, but you don’t know they will or won’t, nobody does). By your reckoning then, the government should have acted even sooner and stronger than extending today from 21 June for four more weeks. When were they supposed to act and what should it have looked like? Back into a lockdown situation / no socialising indoors several weeks ago?
 
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Any 'corrections' to the data being collected, have honestly been quite minor.

As I understand it, DHSC are asking for a split of patients in-hospital, who've tested positive for COVID-19 by:

  1. Those in hospital, with COVID-19, being treated for COVID-19 symptoms, and for whom the primary reason they are in hospital, is COVID-19
  2. Those in hospital, with COVID-19, being treated for COVID-19 symptoms, and for whom COVID-19 is NOT the primary reason they are in hospital
  3. Those in hospital, with COVID-19, who are NOT being treated for COVID-19 symptoms

My concern is that people will only see patients in Group 1 as being 'COVID patients' and claim that patients in Groups 2 and 3, are skewing the figures and making the pandemic look worse than it is. This would be an incorrect conclusion to reach.

Patients in Group 1 are of course, in-hospital because of COVID. The ICD-10 code for COVID-19 infection will be recorded as the primary diagnosis on admission, thereby making it the primary reason why they were admitted.

Patients in Group 2 may very well only be in hospital, because of COVID - the devil is in the detail here, and whilst the primary reason for admission, i.e. what they are there to be treated for in the main, may not BE COVID, COVID may have made their symptoms worse. We have to look at patients in Group 2 and ask "Would they be in hospital, if they didn't have COVID?"

Patients in Group 3 may also be in hospital due to COVID-19, but clearly, COVID-19 is not impacting them sufficiently to be treated for it. These patients, regardless, use up extra hospital capacity. People will absolutely claim that these patients are skewing the figures but people who say this are mistaken - every inpatient with COVID-19 uses extra resources, needs extra management and presents a risk of infection to other patients in the hospital.

Regardless of what group patients fall into, 1, 2 or 3, they're all bad news for the NHS and for the NHS' capacity, and anyone who uses this new data to claim that COVID is overblown is quite simply mistaken.
On group 3, on what basis would someone be admitted to hospital for covid but then not be treated for it? They wouldn’t admit them just for them to lie in a bed surely?
 
On group 3, on what basis would someone be admitted to hospital for covid but then not be treated for it? They wouldn’t admit them just for them to lie in a bed surely?

They wouldn’t be admitted for it, they’d be admitted for something else, and just happen to be positive.
I can understand your point re the extra demands placed upon the hospital, but when looking at the 'severity' of the pandemic in terms of how many people are being admitted to hospital due to the impact of their covid symptoms, do you not think it would be helpful to differentiate. Surely this would allow for better decision making by government etc.

Not ignoring this, will reply when I get chance
 
I can understand your point re the extra demands placed upon the hospital, but when looking at the 'severity' of the pandemic in terms of how many people are being admitted to hospital due to the impact of their covid symptoms, do you not think it would be helpful to differentiate. Surely this would allow for better decision making by government etc.
I think he is just deliberately misunderstanding the point people are making about the admission figures published. I think we all know that even if someone is in hospital tests positive and is not ill or being treated for Covid that the hospital will still need to be careful and keep a record of numbers. For public consumption and for the figure the media report should be those admitted to hospital ill with Covid or who become ill while in hospital with Covid.
 
I can understand your point re the extra demands placed upon the hospital, but when looking at the 'severity' of the pandemic in terms of how many people are being admitted to hospital due to the impact of their covid symptoms, do you not think it would be helpful to differentiate. Surely this would allow for better decision making by government etc.

I'm sure it would be helpful to differentiate. That's separate however from what I was asking @lawe toppa, whose post - in my opinion at least - seemed to imply that people who are admitted and just happen to be positive, should not be counted.

I don't know why the numbers haven't been made public but I sincerely doubt that the government have anything to hide from not publishing them.
I think he is just deliberately misunderstanding the point people are making about the admission figures published. I think we all know that even if someone is in hospital tests positive and is not ill or being treated for Covid that the hospital will still need to be careful and keep a record of numbers. For public consumption and for the figure the media report should be those admitted to hospital ill with Covid or who become ill while in hospital with Covid.

I am not deliberately misunderstanding anything, thank you very much.
 

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