Highlights From The Article:
" ... a guest post by the Daily Sceptics’s in-house doctor, formerly a senior medic in the National health Service (NHS).
He’s run his eye over yesterday’s data release from NHS England that has given rise to some panicky headlines.
Covid hospital admissions are indeed rising, but a third only have Covid incidentally, i.e. it’s not the reason they were admitted to hospital.
NHS ... information about which patients are being treated for Covid as the primary diagnosis (in other words symptoms sufficiently severe to put them in hospital for a while) and patients testing positive for Covid but being treated for something else.
The NHS concealed this information until they were forced by parliamentary pressure to publish in July 2021.
What we can’t tell ... the turnover of patients in hospital.
The NHS has this information but will not release it.
... it gives a better impression of the severity of Omicron vs Delta.
... there are (a growing number of) ‘incidental’ cases than ‘real’ cases ...
So, when the BBC report the number of Covid cases in hospital, only two thirds of that number are ill with Covid.
... one should not assume that lots of patients with incidental Covid are not problematic.
They do create a problem because of so called ‘cohorting’ – essentially positive patients need to be separated from negative patients and nursed separately.
This creates difficulties in allocating specialist nurses and staffing if the patients have to be located in different wards to where they otherwise would be.
... so it generally increases organisation ‘friction’ and reduces efficiency.
... the (Omicron) symptoms it causes do genuinely seem to be mild in comparison to previous variants.
(the graph below) shows the data for London, the leading edge of the Omicron wave ...
In summary, (data) suggest that the real problem is ... an increasing number of incidentally positive patients who create organisational friction
as they have to be cared for separately from non-positive patients at a time when a lot of staff have also been sent home with positive tests or contacts."
