I’m not a doctor. I’ve got the white coat for role-plays, obviously, but there’s a lot of people who are a lot more qualified than I am who you should be listening to when it comes to Covid-19.

Make sure you’re getting your updates and insights from experts who are informed and know what they’re talking about.

However, I find it useful to try and keep up-to-date with what’s going on with Covid-19 around the world. It’s a coping mechanism to try and prevent myself from feeling overwhelmed by it all.

One of the unexpected consequences of this pandemic is that we’ve all become data experts as we try to keep on top of the facts. Every day in this new-normal is an exercise in critical analysis. We always need to be questioning – Does this person know what they’re talking about? How objective are they? What’s the context of this information? Does this information apply to me?

The vaccine

Vaccines remain our best solution for being able to navigate a way through viruses such as Covid-19.

While we have seen some success with the vaccine roll-out around the world, the disparity in access is concerning and leaves us vulnerable to viral mutations that we may not be equipped for.

Here in the UK, we’re moving into the booster phase of the vaccine roll-out. This means that people are receiving their third vaccine dose. This is great, but we need to also make sure that everyone around the world has access to vaccines.

Viruses such as Covid-19 aren’t constrained by borders.

The faster that we can achieve global vaccine solutions, then the sooner we can move beyond the pandemic into a world where Covid-19 becomes an endemic health issue.

What is Omicron?

Omnicron is the name of a variant of the Covid-19 virus. It’s named after a letter in the Greek alphabet, following the protocol that has been set by the World Health Organisation.

The Omnicron variant is receiving a lot of attention and focus because it’s been identified as a variant of concern – this means that it has some characteristics that indicate that it might be a particularly dangerous form of the virus.

We don’t have much information about what the potential impact of Omnicron might be. There is a possibility that the mutations of this variant might make it more transmissable, it might be more harmful, and it might be able to avoid our existing vaccines.

It’s predicted that Omnicron will become the dominant strain of the virus around the world, replacing the Delta strain.

Around the world, we’re seeing a number of countries move to tighten restrictions to try and minimise the spread of Omnicron until we have more information about it.

UK – are we ready for Omnicron?

From the very beginning, the UK’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been an emotional rollercoaster. So many mistakes have been made, so little accountability has been taken, and it seems that few lessons have been learnt.

Having embraced the concept of a “freedom day” that saw the removal of pretty much all restrictions, it’s difficult now for the government to try and bring back some level of restrictions to try and combat the potential impact of Omnicron.

There has been some tightening of travel restrictions, and some requirements to wear masks. But it feels like a very half-hearted attempt with weak communication that is unlikely to have much cut-through with a population determined to put the strain of lockdown behind it.

The main pressure point is the UK’s health system. We’re in the middle of the winter peak, which even in non-Covid times puts enormous pressure on the entire health system. If there’s a spike in Covid cases that leads to higher hospitalisation rates, things could start to get messy.

We’re already seeing the headlines – the battle to save Christmas is on.

Current data

The best data source that we seem to have is the government’s Covid-19 page on its website.

One of the key failings of this government has been an inability to establish an effective test trace and track system. Other countries have done it, but not the UK. The capabilities around testing appear to be improving, but we’re still relying on lag indicators not lead indicators to shape our response.

Because we’re not testing everyone all the time, test results give a sense of where we’re at with infection numbers but don’t give us a complete picture. What we do know that we had our highest rate of recorded infections on 1Jan21 when the 7-day average hit 61K. From there, reported infection rates slowly declined – dropping to a 7-day average of around 1.8K at the end of April. We then saw a resurgence of the virus, with a peak of reported infections of a 7-day average of around 47.9K on 16Jul21. The 7-day average is currently around 42K new infections per day.

Hospital Admission rates is a real crunch-point. We currently have around 7.6K people in hospital because of Covid-19, and we’re currently seeing around 760 people being admitted each day.

In terms of deaths, the data on this got pretty messy. After several months, the government realised that different parts of the health infrastructure were counting Covid-19 related deaths in different ways. They’re now officially counting deaths as Covid-19 related if they occur within 28 days of a positive test, but even that seems to come with quite a few caveats. If we take the UK-level data at face-value, we’ve had over 145K Covid-related deaths and we’re currently averaging around 110 Covid-related deaths per day.

What’s the end-game?

One of the challenges with viruses is that they mutate – they’re unpredictable. The more infections and transmissions that are occurring, the more opportunities that the virus has to adapt and evolve.

The continued emergence of new strains highlights the risks that we’re facing and why it’s imperative that vaccine solutions are rolled out to everyone around the world as quickly as possible.

Follow Gareth Johnson on Twitter

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