well welcome to today's talk it's
Thursday the 6th of October now I want
to do a bit of a data burst today on the
UK data and it will be looking at the
United States data as well and hopefully
we'll make some uh inferences from this
as to how things are going to go over
the next few months now last week I
forgot to give you the symptoms so I'm
going to give you the Zoe study symptoms
first of all these are updated every
week and they are very consistent so I
have a pretty high degree of confidence
in these
so here we are here this is the the most
common symptoms at the moment so these
are people that have tested positive for
covid so we know that these people have
got symptomatic covert they've tested
positive so we know that these are
genuine symptoms of covid from a large
sample all over the UK
and uh let's look at it now so sore
throat is the most common so if you've
got if you've got um SARS coronavirus 2
infection there's a 66 probability if
you're symptomatic that you'll have a
sore throat there's a 54 possibility
you'll have a headache
then runny nose block knows also 53
interesting so uh the nose can become
runny or blocked
of course it could be runny then blocked
afterwards it can it doesn't have to be
people can get both at slightly
different phases of the evolution of the
condition
um cough with no phlegm so coughing but
not coughing anything up 51 percent
sneezing 47 cough with phlegm 47 horse
voice muscle pains and aches 31
dizziness 22 altered smell down to 19
swollen neck glands 19. the
lymphadenopathy the swollen glands in
the neck these are the lymph nodes
actually not actually glands that
everyone calls them glands but we should
call them nodes chest pain Sore Eyes
earache shortness of breath that's good
down to 15 percent
her chills or Shivers indicating a
febrile response fairly low uh 15 for uh
chills and shivers um lots of smell
altogether down to 13. and uh fever down
to uh down to 12 percent
so there we go that's the current list
of symptoms they'll be posted of course
at the top of the description so you can
get them if you want so if you have
those symptoms be suspicious that you
could have you could have a covid-19
infection but as we'll see common colds
are much more expensive not much more
expensive much much more extensive
there's a lot more of them in the
country at the moment now here we see
the covered symptom uh data here so this
is from the Zoe study and I'm very
grateful to the the Zoe data scientists
and Tim Spector for allowing me to
present this data first
is very generous of them
so first of all we're looking at this
incidence of common cold like features
versus
actually covered 19. so the blue line
here is covid-19 infections
and the orange line is order the
respiratory viruses so we see that while
covered infections have gone up yes we
also see that common colds are much more
common slightly coming starting to come
down there but still quite High probably
about well probably about five times
more common at the moment so if you've
got common cold type symptoms in the UK
at the moment the probability is it's a
rhinovirus that's the most common it
could be one of the other coronaviruses
as well but these common cold type
viruses but they can still make you feel
pretty grotty for a few days and really
quite you know like colds but you can be
knocked off for a good few days with the
common cold very similar features of
course to Liam
SARS Coronavirus 2.
although be clear that SARS coronavirus
2 is associated with more serious
complications in a minority of people
compared to colds we're not minimizing
the condition by any means
and I must say the move to endemicity
especially in the American data that
we'll look at later is taking a lot
longer than I thought it's this is more
of a problem than I expected to be at
this stage
um but anyway that's that's the um the
fact that the common chords are more uh
common than the SARS coronavirus to
infections now this is a none covered
like illness stratified by age
so what we see here
is that um this is the younger age group
here so they're catching the colds
socializing in at school and they're
bringing it home in the next Generation
there to have a lot of symptoms there is
the uh their parental generation in
green 35 to 54 so this is the common
pattern that we see children catch it
socializing and then spread it to the
rest of us
thank you very much but it's always been
so and I guess it always always will be
so we're seeing that kind of uh
pattern there not surprising at all
really
um it's what we've uh what we've
expected that's in none uh none covered
cold like illness stratified by age
a non-covered cold like illness
stratified by region where we see
basically people have got colds all over
the country and there's not much
difference between UK regions which is a
very big place so it is a bit surprising
but basically this is becoming uh these
are becoming symptomatic everywhere now
going back to SARS coronavirus 2
particularly we do see a continue these
are the Omicron spikes of course but we
do see a continued uh increase
so this is still a going up the number
of infections are going up and that
gives us an R value there at the moment
of about 1.1
so cases are going up our values between
1 and 1.2 probably around about 1.1 so
cases definitely uh still going up
in the United Kingdom
now in the in the United States we
actually don't have data for symptomatic
cases so we'll we'll be speculating but
I suspect it's a similar situation
in the States now we could argue that
being fairly early in the year
this could be a good thing because
people are building up immunity
uh for for winter time especially
mucosal compartment immunity which is so
important in respiratory infection so
even though this is bad now it may take
the pressure off hospitals over winter
to some extent
of course the big unknown for next
winter is influenza
how are we going to fare with influenza
in the UK and the states and other parts
of the world if there's a lot of
influenza cases and we've got off pretty
Lightly for the past few years
uh that could be a problem that's the
big unknown uh together with ongoing uh
covid-19 which we're hoping is going to
be less but time will tell new cases in
England are getting similar pattern
they're going up in England uh most
countries now this is across the this is
across the the nation so we see that
what do we see we see that uh Northern
Ireland and uh
Scotland are slightly lower cases
um but there again they were slightly
higher before so they've probably built
up a bit more immunity so but basically
the countries are trending pretty well
together in terms of SARS coronavirus to
uh symptomatic infections
and again across the regions in England
well we do see that London's quite a bit
lower at the moment
that's the green line there But there
again London was quite a bit higher here
so again this indicates to me that the
higher rates in London uh well a few
months ago
um could have built up some immunity
resulting in lower cases now and I'm
hoping this is going to be repeated all
over the country
um this next uh this next winter
uh daily incident starts coronavirus 2
infection rates across age groups
so these are new cases across age groups
and again we see that the younger ones
were getting more but again we see that
is starting to level off now presumably
as more immunity is developed but the
parental generation as we see is still
uh going up
again not surprising because there's
some Delay from infection to uh being
symptomatic now this this data that the
Zoe study gives and I talked to the Zuri
scientists about this last week they're
fully aware that this is pessimistic so
these are the these These are the number
of cases that people would expect to be
getting long covered as of today as a
result of the incidence and new cases of
covid-19
but it's based on the prognostications
from 2021 data and we know that the
Omicron is not so severe so uh these
really are the worst case scenarios I
would say in terms of a long covered but
we are seeing more people still
developing long covered and as we've
looked at from other videos this is a
real problem uh sequelae from covid
um is going to be with us for
sometime I'm afraid but those numbers
are pessimistic hopefully we're not
getting new daily cases of long covid 4
000 I would hope it's a lot less than
that but um
as I say based on 2021 data
so that that's the uh covered study and
the uh and the symptoms now let's look
at the uh just a couple of things um
Professor spector's comments uh while
covid's still increasing at a very high
rate uh colds are rising even faster
um so plenty of people feeling a bit
under the weather with colds and uh
covered at the moment in the UK the
pattern shows strong links to kids
returning to school each year yes we
know this only too well uh maybe we lost
a bit of our immunity uh over the
restrictions in uh the covert period and
this is why it is a bit concerning that
if we've got reduced uh resistance to
infection for rhinoviruses for common
colds then
I guess we I I don't think I've been
exposed to an influenza virus for some
years now so my immunity is going to be
reduced
increasing the risk of influenza for um
for next winter I think
but we don't know hopefully there won't
be uh if the virus isn't around of
course we won't get it
we'll have to see but it isn't unknown
now 14-day Trends in the state so case
is down 23 of course that's based on
testing so it's not reliable but it's a
very rough indicator test positivity is
9.1 which is down but still fairly high
now this indicates to me this High test
positivity rate well relatively High
test positivity rate in the states
indicates to me there's still one heck
of a lot of circulating virus in the
States because a lot of the tests are
coming back positive really quite High
so let's just look at the uh let's look
at that figure there so um this so we
see the test positivity rate is coming
down it's about level here but but it it
is it has been of course much higher
um
but it's coming down now so it's
trending down over the last few weeks
which is
is encouraging but still one heck of a
lot of it around
that's still a lot of cases
hospitalized people actually in hospital
27 000. this was actually the number as
of the 5th of October
down 12 on the two weeks and here we see
the trend there this is the Intensive
Care
admissions now it's still high compared
to the UK but Hospital admissions
overall going down which is encouraging
to see icus are down but still
relatively High compared to
other countries such as the UK
and it's been chronically high in the
states for a long time
as we've talked about probably mostly
due to the a large amount of
comorbidities in the states people who
get it
especially if they've got poorly managed
comorbidities hypertension obesity
uh insulin resistant diabetes
particularly
um and there's plenty of it
the United States needs a root and
Branch reform of its nutrition
the quality of food in the United States
in terms of the amount of processed food
is not good to be quite honest a lot of
foods contain more carbohydrates and
sugar and processed fats than you need
um
there really needs to be a cultural
change because I really think that's
what's accounting for a lot of what
we're seeing here and of course that's
transposing into human pain suffering
and death
um if this is acts as a wake-up call
that would be great I suspect it won't
but um it would be good if it did
and then uh finally deaths in the states
um the well they're still 391 per day
it's still quite High
um people are sort of um
you know saying this is kind of
you know the pandemic's largely been
ignored in the States but still a
reasonable High death rate
very sad to
very sad to see
um
keep clicking the wrong one today there
we go one that one
um so but the deaths are down but kind
of leveling out so this is kind of a bit
of a a bit of a plateau period here
really
I was seeing this kind of um level-ish
bit here let's hope that starts to go
down but that's the trend in the states
[Applause]
now um
just before we finish the Zoe health
study um
the it is it is I'll just play you the
video clip actually because I've been
informed now that the app and everything
is the same for the states as the UK
foreign
Mass data it tells us all sorts of
things we wouldn't know about otherwise
and of course it is a uh
a relatively low budget way of
collecting
very good quality your Healthcare data
that's not based on randomized
controlled trials which may be partly
controlled by outside agencies
so that was today's data um
can't really form a conclusion really
because we've got too many unknowns the
big unknown that is a concern at the
moment is influenza over winter but
we'll be keeping an eye on it as always
so you're as up to date as I am and
thank you for watching and thank you to
the Zoe data scientists for a language
to share their data