Today's news brings more planned changes to how things have been. Those who are double vaccinated are no longer going to have to self-isolate if they've had contact with a confirmed case after August 16th (I think they have to be two weeks past the second vaccination as it takes a few weeks for the immunity to build.) That rule will also go for under-18s regardless of their vaccination status.
And I read that they'll no longer be doing contact tracing in schools, which I find strange, as I would have thought some of the parents would have appreciated a heads-up that their child has been in contact with a positive case?
Sajid Javid, the new health secretary, has now said that the cases could go up as high as 100,000 cases in this wave. So that would be expected to equate to around 1000 to 2000 daily hospitalisations, and I'm not sure off the top of my head what the total hospitalisations would be, given those figures....should be lower than for previous waves as on average people shouldn't have to stay in hospital as long if they do contract Covid and need hospital care.
But I am getting a feeling, after reading all of this, that compliance with testing regimens (lateral flow tests, and getting a PCR test if you have symptoms) might go down a lot, so we might have increasing undercounting of cases over the next few months, and that could also lead to some increased spread...obviously on the other side we have increasing vaccinations. But as I mentioned above, there are still these stubburn spots where there are fairly low vaccination rates in some of these inner-city areas, where the virus has a potential to spread widely within that limited area. The inner-city areas tend to be places where people are slightly more likely to live in multi-generational households, living very closely to neighbours, and high contact with neighbours. So that could still mean spread of the virus within those pockets, and the added propensity for spread with the Delta variant.
My main concern here, aside from the risk to health for those people and those with lower immunity who are living in those pockets (those who have some degree of immune compromise for any reason), would be that a high number of hospitalisations per day seems to risk having the backlog of operations grow even further as the NHS focuses on the influx of Covid cases, again, and the risk to vulnerable individuals in hospitals that they might contact Covid in the hospital and find it harder to fight off due to existing health issues that took them into the hospital. So I would think that means high maintenance Covid infection controls, social distancing, etc within hospitals for some time to come, which again cuts down the beds per ward space and reduces the number of people who can be treated at one time.
Obviously we will hope we get through it. The NHS has got through far larger waves of Covid and has just about coped, with the exception of being able to keep up with so called non-urgent operations, and some testing and cancer treatments have got behind..which I thought the priority would be to get on top of that situation, not deal with another wave. And 16 months of restrictions HAVE taken a toll on people in so many ways! I wouldn't want to stay in full lockdown forever! But I do think the government needs to be sending out appropriate messages of how to continue to be careful in reasonable ways, like perhaps continuing to wear a mask in some situations, indoor ventilation, meeting friends and family in the garden or going for a walk outside with them, etc, continuing handwashing and sanitising, to a level that's appropriate for a third large wave of Covid incoming, and that not everyone has been double-vaccinated, and that even double-vaccination isn't a 100% guarantee against getting Covid, or a rough case of Covid, though it's definitely, on average, going to hugely reduce chance of hospitalisation/death, which is brilliant compared to 2020 and earlier in 2021.
This has been a terrible time for so many people. One thing we could use keeping hold of from the darkest days of this pandemic is the amazing examples of people caring about their neighbours, communities, etc. I don't think that will disappear entirely, and let's hope that also helps us get through this wave and any future waves.
