It's difficult to find a news story that isn't based on fear at the moment.

My daughter is going through the dissertation matching process and has had early morning (due to California time) video conferences with 7 professors this week. No one is happy. The professors are not happy, the students are not happy, but St Andrews administration is holding firm on 35 student cap for in person classes. One of her grad classes has 36 enrolled and is scheduled in a 200 person lecture hall and it must be virtual. Even if the professor arranges that some students don't come each time and even though they will all be masked.
"We should just have it at the pub" seems to be a common refrain.

Daily data:

Cases 35,847 (33,904 last Wednesday)
Deaths 149 (111)
Patients admitted 859 (773 on the 14th)
Patients in hospital 6,874 (6,370 on the 17th)
Patients in ventilation beds 957 (925 on the 17th)
People vaccinated up to and including 24 August 2021:
First dose: 47,792,552
Second dose: 42,072,712

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now up 12.1% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is up 13.4%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 106.1 today.

Interesting drop.

I think it should be 35,847 cases?

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...392b2e89a3.png
Source: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Does anyone know, perhaps corporate-wage-slave , how long does an average patient admitted with Covid spend in hospital?

Also, is there any data on the number of patients in hospital because of Covid vs patients who tested positive once admitted?

I can’t remember where I saw it, but I recall reading that for at least some people admitted they are in hospital longer than before - they’re typically younger and therefore their bodies have more reserves to draw on if they become seriously ill.

My suspicion is that a single average (mean or median) will not be very insightful without stratification at the very least into vaccinated / non-vaccinated and probably by age too.

I’m also not sure how widely this data is available on a national level between various trusts. If it isn’t, on the assumption that the patterns of infection to admission/discharge and serious illness vs mild illness are holding roughly steady, the changes over time in the data published by the government about hospital utilisation (number of beds in use) are probably a good enough approximation for most purposes. If they stay manageable, with relatively low rates of increase over time, that’s a very different picture to them increasing dramatically in a short period of time.

For the first, the median stay is about 8 days (average gets drawn out by a low number of cases in hospital for months). This is down about a day from Alpha, mainly due to better triage and treatment options out of hospital. So we now send people home with dexamethasone and anti-coagulents, whereas in Alpha we may have at least started that treatment in hospital. So we get a big group staying in for a few nights, another group staying in for about 12 - 20 days (these are the cases that may end up in ICU) and finally some long term cases.

I haven't seen a recent breakdown for "admitted for COVID" and "admitted for something else but found to be COVID", but if I had to guess, the latter group is in the 30 to 40% area. It's complicated because if someone is experiencing dizzy spells and mild breathing problems, then the COVID diagnosis suddenly explains a lot, but that may not have been why they ended up in hospital - they may have taken a fall down some stairs and ended up as a 999 case. So separating this all out is problematic and unhelpful.

Daily data:

Cases 38,281 (36,572 last Thursday)
Deaths 140 (113)
Patients admitted 818 (607 on the 15th)
Patients in hospital 6,906 (6,426 on the 18th)
Patients in ventilation beds 974 (909 on the 18th)
People vaccinated up to and including 25 August 2021:
First dose: 47,860,628
Second dose: 42,234,417

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now up 11.1% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is up 14.2%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 110.0 today. Total number of jabs administered moved above 90 million yesterday. Daily jabs have been slowly rising since the start of the month, now averaging over 200,000 per day. 77.7% of those over 16 have now received both jabs.

Traffic light list update
 

From the Telegraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/n...red-countries/

The traffic light system really is just a load of nonsense.

Still no changes for double vaccinated travellers coming from Green countries… no changes for places like SA or Turkey…

what a load of rubbish.

Hi,

Another record day for Covid cases in Scotland

6,865

( 1,800 above the previous high)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-58357346

Regards

TBS

Huge numbers. Jesus. And now the first mentions of a circuit breaker lockdown.

Stirred by the press and denied by the Scottish Government. We shall see.