Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[Brennan]

I’m an intensive care doctor. Covid patients are younger this time

NHS consultant predicts an awful winter with Covid-denier patients, bed shortages and staffing issues

www.theguardian.com

In between previous waves the hospital returned Covid wards to normal wards and increased our elective operating programme. Sadly, we are seeing those wards being turned back into Covid wards again. Although we’ve not yet reduced our elective operations, I cannot see how we’ll cope as Covid admissions increase.

We’re back to planning an increase in critical care capacity and anticipate this will be required to manage the influx of Covid patients. We’re much more adept at pivoting back to Covid measures, having lived through this before. But a number of things are hampering us this time round. We have unprecedented numbers of A&E attendances, with waits in excess of 10 hours. So overall demand has increased massively. The hospital is full, similar to entering a bad winter, so turning wards into Covid wards isn’t easy. There just aren’t enough beds.

Staffing is a perfect storm. Staff are absolutely, genuinely exhausted. After more than a year of Covid, resilience is very low. Covid isolation alerts and school quarantines for staff’s children mean that huge number of colleagues are being required to isolate, leaving those behind picking up more and more shifts in order to run a safe service. It’s a huge testament to the staff that we still have people coming forward, often at the detriment of their own wellbeing, to fill gaps over and over again.

In addition, numerous staff are off sick with physical and mental health problems as a direct result of the pandemic. And large numbers of staff are leaving in the knowledge that even if Covid waves cease, there is a huge amount of pressure to proceed at pace through the backlog of cases, with no respite.

Get those nightclubs open, and take those masks off…

 

[Deleted member 48881]

Today; UK, +35,707 cases, +29 deaths
Italy, +1,390 cases, +25 deaths

dafuq like

 

[ForeverBlue92]

Got my 2nd jab on Tuesday very quick considering only had my first just under 5 weeks ago

 

[RAFUH]

So far the data I have seen from here in US is pretty encouraging re vaccination of teenagers.

We also need more data on how prevalent long COVID is in kids.

As more kids go down the ‘deep, dark tunnel’ of long Covid, doctors still can't predict who is at risk

Long Covid is not an adults-only phenomenon, and it poses the same mystery in kids as in adults.

www.statnews.com

In adults, studies peg the proportion who experience prolonged difficulties at 1 in 3 Covid patients, but there is a vanishingly small set of numbers about children. Experts told STAT they’ve all looked at one research paper from Rome that studied 129 patients from 2 to 18 years old, as well as data on about 9,000 children and adolescents from the U.K.’s health system. From that small base, they surmise a plausible range from 7% to 20%. In the U.S., nearly 4 million children and adolescents under 18 have tested positive for Covid.

And even if kids don't get sick from it, if we don't ever vaccinate kids the virus will continue infecting, replicating and potentially mutating into other variants. Vaccines could be ineffective against these new variants or a variant could develop that does make kids sick.

 

[BlueToff]

Nightmare, i just got out my isolation on Wednesday.

Wife is currently isolating as she had close contact last week with someone who tested positve.

At least i got my second vaccine on Wed

Aye all being well it'll be fine. The lateral flow ones are about as useful as a marzipan dildo but, what gets me is the PCR ones aren't exactly consistent. Really unsure of how the three mates that I've got have now tested positive (and it was all from them being at this one place for the Ukraine game), none of their girlfriends, who they've spent a few days/nights with, have tested positive None of them are double jabbed or, as far as they're aware, have had COVID before, but who knows! I'm gutted about not seeing my niece, but not like she's gonna be going anywhere I suppose!

Dreadful news on your wife mate especially after just ending yours. I think the solution further down the line has to be a lower period of isolation, but maybe with the condition it has to be a release PCR test after 5 days or something.

All being well at least now you're double dosed you'll be able to, from the 19th, not have to isolate again unless you're positive!

 

[BlueToff]

Got my 2nd jab on Tuesday very quick considering only had my first just under 5 weeks ago

Yeah I'm 100% going to go to a walk-in during August at some time and get my second.

 

[BlueToff]

Get those nightclubs open, and take those masks off…

In general, younger people aren't yet fully vaccinated, so it makes sense for them to be more affected right now.

On the plus side, if there is one, it's that hospital stays are shorter and not resulting in as much on the ICU wards on ventilators etc. And that is meaning fewer deaths.

 

[BlueToff]

Hope you manage to avoid it mate, congrats on the neice.

Thanks legs!

Yeah I avoided contact fortunately. We were in together for about 3 hours the other night (before he got symptoms though), but I was working til late and so was stowed away in the study anyway, and he'd gone straight to bed as he was feeling crap (fatigued but he just put it down to a heavy weekend as you would). Working crap hours is hopefully gonna be my saving grace!

 

[LinekersLegs]

Get those nightclubs open, and take those masks off…

Can only hope a lot of people continue to mask voluntarily in many places.

California lifted all state restrictions on June 15th yet locally I’d say over 80% of people still wearing masks when they go into the supermarket. Some areas have reintroduced mask requirements though because of an increase in Delta cases.

 

[ForeverBlue92]

In general, younger people aren't yet fully vaccinated, so it makes sense for them to be more affected right now.

On the plus side, if there is one, it's that hospital stays are shorter and not resulting in as much on the ICU wards on ventilators etc. And that is meaning fewer deaths.

I was down that Junkyard Mini Golf in town last weekend and pretty much hardly anyone was wearing the masks on the course except me/missus and our mates despite being instructed to.

Was a taster for what to expect really.

 

[LinekersLegs]

 

[roydo]

Its mad this. For weeks, if not months, my area has been a virgin White on the covid maps. Less than 3.

The last 2 weeks its gone dark blue, due to the cases per 100,000 being alarming, buts its still like 40 cases in a week.

0 deaths.
1 hospital admission.

UK still testing over a million a day.

Duno what to make of it.

 

[LinekersLegs]

 

[roydo]

Did any of the men in the 9% control group actually notice?

 

[wainy]

Just seen someone post above there is 10 hour waiting times in A&E? Which A&E is this as I find that extremely hard to believe.