The Times - UK (2022-01-13)

10 Thursday January 13 2022 | the times

News

In the summer, after a winter in which
flu all but disappeared, Britain’s leading
influenza forecaster made a prediction.
This winter we could, argued John
McCauley, director of the Worldwide
Influenza Centre at the Francis Crick
Institute in London, see a great surge in
flu as the virus attacked a population
that had lost its immunity.
Or we could see a trickle as, starting
from a low base, it failed to take off. Or
we could see something in between.
“Very little would surprise me,” he said.
McCauley was not wrong. The latest
flu surveillance report has found that
despite the worst fears of the NHS,
which was preparing to cope with con-
current Covid-19 and flu waves, the
virus is still at low levels.
Normally, the return of schools in
January is exactly when flu cases would
be surging, adding to the annual winter
pressures of the NHS. Instead, for the
second year in a row, there is almost
none. And not only in this country.

This week McCauley met his col-

leagues around the world and found the

picture was the same. “We haven’t seen

years before in which flu activity has

been so low,” he said.

There’s a bit of a surge in Russia, a

little in Kyrgyzstan and some strange

dynamics in China. Not only is it low in

Flu did not come back to bite us

Tom Whipple Science Editor most of the rest of the world, thanks to
travel restrictions it is not spreading
from where there are hotspots.
In the summer Boris Johnson’
warned of a “rough winter” ahead, with
advisers telling him flu could “come
back to bite us”.
This year, with flu’s millennia-old
rhythms disturbed by global lockdown,
we could not be sure what strain would
predominate, nor how it would behave.
Without having had an annual top-up
of immunity by infection, would flu
cause havoc alongside Covid-19?
Thanks to Omicron we have not
returned to normal. In trying to sup-
press a virus with a high reproductive
number we have easily controlled one
with a far lower number.
McCauley is already looking at what
strains we can expect in the next influ-
enza season, to blunt its virulence.
“It is quite clear that it hasn’t gone
away,” he says. “I will still be concerned
that flu will come and get us next year.”
But this year, mercifully, our worst
fears have not been realised.

Flu away

Percentage of people testing positive

for influenza according to the

Respiratory DataMart system. Flu rates

are still well below pre-pandemic levels

30%

25

20

15

10

5

0

2019

2020

Jan Mar May Jul Oct Dec

2021

Source: UK Health Security Agency

The coronavirus becomes 90 per cent

less infectious after 20 minutes in the

air, a study has found, suggesting that

close contact remains the key route of

transmission.

The research, based on laboratory

experiments, showed that when sus-

pended in aerosols, the virus particles

rapidly lose their ability to infect cells,

especially when humidity is low —

such as in air-conditioned offices.

This implies that ventilation may be

less useful than had been thought in

combating spread. However, other

scientists cautioned that it was not clear

how the findings would translate into

real-world situations, and that they

needed to be squared with the evidence

from superspreading events, in which

infections appeared to occur across a

large area.

The work, by researchers from the

Virus ‘90% less infectious

after 20 minutes in the air’

University of Bristol, involved suspend-

ing a small number of particles in the air

by levitating them between electro-

magnets. In this way the conditions

around them could be controlled and

the virus sampled after different peri-

ods of time. There was a marked and

immediate fall in the infectiousness of

the virus as soon as it entered the air.

The researchers said this informa-

tion was key for monitoring and

preventing coronavirus infections.

When a virus leaves the body in

respiratory particles, those particles

begin to dry out. Dissolved carbon di-

oxide levels also drop, changing the

acidity of the particles.

These two factors make it harder for

the virus to survive. Previous work has

suggested that despite these pressures,

it was possible for the virus to remain

infectious in aerosol for hours. The new

work, published ahead of peer review,

implies that this happens in minutes.

Tom Whipple

Hospitals are reaching their peak of
coronavirus patients, a senior NHS
leader has said on another day of
encouraging data.
The number of people being treated
for Covid-19 in English hospitals has
fallen for two days in a row for the first
time since November, with admissions
peaking or falling in every region out-
side the northeast.
The 16,881 patients in hospital is half
the peak at this time last year and 2,
fewer than the peak in the first wave in
April 2020.
Matthew Taylor, head of the NHS
Confederation of hospital bosses, said:
“Unless things change unexpectedly,
we are close to the national peak of
Covid patients in hospital. This is a
significant moment.”
Taylor has been one of the more
cautious NHS leaders and emphasised
that some parts of the health service
were still experiencing rising pressure.
“Some parts of UK are still seeing rising
patient numbers alongside staff
absence,” he said. “One northern trust,
for example, told us it doesn’t expect to
reach its peak in hospitalisation for ten
more days.”
Discharging patients from hospital
has been an issue in recent days after
admissions stopped rising in all but one
region. In London they have fallen by a
fifth since New Year’s Eve and hospital
admission rates are well below those in
the north. They are highest in the
northwest, at 5.1 per 100,000, but this
has not risen for a week. Admission
rates are lowest in the southeast and
southwest of England, at 2.3 per
100,000 — both largely flat during the
past week.
Jeremy Hunt, the former health
secretary, said: “It does feel like sun-
shine is edging through the clouds.” He
wrote in his weekly email: “There is a
general sense that we are past the peak
and the NHS will just about get through
it. The number of hospital admissions
has increased quite sharply but is still
only about half the peak of a year ago.”
A consultant on the frontline has
backtracked on predictions that the
NHS would be overwhelmed this win-
ter and said it was looking increasingly
likely that the country could ride out
the Omicron wave.
Richard Cree, an intensive care con-
sultant at the James Cook University
Hospital in Middlesbrough, had feared

that the number of patients being ad-

mitted would be higher due to the latest

coronavirus variant. This week he said

things were not as bad as he initially

thought. Writing on his nomore-

surgeons.com blog, Cree said: “The

number of people being admitted

hasn’t risen as high as I feared it might

and it may even be starting to plateau. I

will admit that I thought things might

be worse by now but I’m all too happy to

be proved wrong.”

Boris Johnson said that high vaccine

uptake had allowed England to get

through the Omicron wave without

significant restrictions. “That is the

reason that we now have one of the

most open economies, if not the most

open economy, in Europe,” he added.

Confirmed cases have been falling in

the past week, but there is uncertainty

over whether this is linked to testing de-

lays and post-Christmas backlogs. The

representative survey by the Office for

National Statistics, considered the

most reliable, reported that overall in-

fections rose in the first week of Janu-

ary but by less than the week before. It

estimated that 4.3 million people in the

UK had the virus, up by 15 per cent on

the previous week, compared with a

rise of 64 per cent the week before that.

Covid relief for health chiefs as

News Coronavirus

Chris Smyth Whitehall Editor
Katie Gibbons

The national picture

How Britain compares

How many are in hospital?

There are 19,735 patients being treated in

hospital. 793 patients are on ventilators. An

additional 2,049 patients have been

admitted, up 5.2 per cent in the seven days to

January 8 when this data was last updated

Hospital admissions

Seven-day average

How does 2021 compare?

There were 8,477 deaths from all causes

recorded in England and Wales in the week

to December 31, of which the coronavirus

accounted for 6.9 per cent. The number of

weekly deaths was 523 higher than the

five-year average for the same time of year

Apr Jul Oct Jan Apr Jul Oct

0

5,

10,

15,

20,

2020/

Five-year average

Oct Jan Apr Jul Oct Jan

0

50,

100,

150,

200,

How many people have Covid-19?

There were 129,587 new cases reported

yesterday, bringing the total so far to

14,862,138 or 222.5 for every 1,000 people

Daily cases

19% decrease from seven days ago

(based on seven-day moving average)

National

R number

Seven-day 1.2 to 1.

average

How many have died?

Yesterday, there were 398 deaths reported,

bringing the total number of deaths in the

past seven days to 1,724. The rolling

average number of daily deaths is 246.3,

up from 170.7 a day a week ago

Deaths

Seven-day average

Oct Jan Apr Jul Oct Jan

0

1,

2,

3,

4,

Oct Jan Apr Jul Oct Jan

0

500

1,

1,

Figures as of 6pm yesterday Source: Our World in Data (latest figures available) and gov.uk. Note: Selected countries

Percentage of population who have received at least one vaccine dose

(total doses administered in brackets)

Daily (Jan 11)

First dose 19,

Boosters (Jan 11)

139,

Second 47.8m

Second 28,

Total 36m

First dose 52.0m

People vaccinated

in the UK

99.0% (22.9m)

90.6% (19.9m)

87.4% (1.1m)

85.8% (85.7m)

83.9% (72.1m)

81.3% (117m)

79.8% (44.4m)

78.9% (128.9m)

76.5% (135.7m)

UAE

Portugal

Malta

Spain

Canada

Italy

Australia

France

UK