July 2022 — M2CC Newsletter

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12 | M2CC - News www.m2cc.us JULY 2022 EDITION not much worse than a bad the one in six people in this There has been no significant which is growing 35 per cent case of the flu. He told the group who have not taken increase in the number of faster than the previously BBC Today programme on up the offer of a spring Covid patients in intensive dominant Omicron BA.2, Friday: “Covid can disrupt booster. care wards. And deaths are is expected to make up all parts of your life when you’re poorly, but in terms of its lethality, the picture is much, much, much closer to seasonal flu than it was when it emerged.” Aren’t hospital cases rising? Yes, admissions are up 41 per cent in the last week. And among the elderly and vulnerable, Covid can still There have also been a number of outbreaks in care homes. But it is worth pointing out that of the 6,400 patients in hospital with the virus, only 37 per cent were admitted for Covid. The rest are “incidental” cases — those who arrived in hospital for something else but then tested positive for the virus. down to between 40 and 50 a day, compared with 1,200 at the January 2021 peak. What is driving the wave? Two new variants have emerged, each slightly different mutations of the Omicron strain that has dominated in the UK since December. The new variants — BA.4 and BA.5 — make up 61 per cent of cases. The new variants are more transmissible than previous strains, though it is not clear whether that is because they are inherently more infectious or because they are better at evading our immunity. When will we get the next jab? The spring booster programme for vulnerable be deadly, particularly for cases. Eventually BA.5, people and over-75s is
WWW.M2CC.US Monthly Newsletter | 13 still running. The autumn different levels of immunity, amount of serious disease positive patient requires booster programme will depending on whether we should still be kept in check isolation, taking up further start in September and is have been infected with the unless really significant resources. During the height likely to include over-65s early Wuhan strain, Alpha, variants emerge.” of the Omicron waves in and vulnerable people, although government advisers are weighing up whether to extend this to over-50s. Younger people are unlikely to be eligible. By September Moderna’s new vaccine — a “bivalent” jab that contains the original vaccine as well as a new Beta, Gamma, Delta or Omicron — or not at all. Some of us have had two vaccines, some four, and we have received different mixes of Moderna, Pfizer- BioNTech and Oxford- AstraZeneca. Roughly speaking, though, infection seems to provide Eventually, he believes, these will become less and less frequent, and within a few years will become annual waves, striking in winter like the flu. Paul Hunter, professor of health protection at the University of East Anglia, said a big wave this summer January and April, a peak of 17,000 beds were taken up with Covid patients. If the new wave reaches anything like that number, it will put serious pressure on the health service. Doctors point out that repeated waves could also increase rates of long Covid. formula tweaked to tackle stronger and more durable could even be beneficial, Will that affect my chance the new variants — should protection against further topping up our immunity of getting an ambulance if be available. Moderna said infection than does and reducing the chances I need one? its new vaccine boosts protection against BA.4 and BA.5 to far higher levels than existing vaccines and should give a longer-lasting response. Under the UK’s contract with Moderna, we will automatically receive the newest version of the vaccination. Last month’s ONS report found people who had been infected with Omicron (or the BA subvariants) had a 77 per cent reduced risk of reinfection. Those infected by Delta had 57 per cent protection, Alpha 41 per cent and the early strain by 40. of a Covid surge over the winter. “Then we won’t have Covid and flu causing us problems at the same time,” he said. “Influenza this winter worries me more than Covid, and the thing that worries me more than that is Covid and influenza at the same time.” That is the fear. Emergency patients are waiting almost two hours for ambulances to respond to suspected heart attacks and strokes, while almost 600 people waited longer than ten hours outside A&E in April. Adrian Boyle, from the Royal College vaccine. Last night Pfizer Will we see more of these Will the NHS cope? of Emergency Medicine, announced impressive results for its tweaked vaccine — although it is not clear whether it will be ready for September. Companies are also working on joint flu-Covid vaccines, the first of which are expected to be ready late next year. Most of us have now had Covid. Does that increase waves? Almost definitely. Immunity will rise and fall as waves of infection and vaccination campaigns come and go and the virus evolves. “For the foreseeable future, it’s not unreasonable to assume that every few months we might see waves of infection, which give you cold-like Doctors’ biggest concern is that even a small rise in cases will take up muchneeded beds that hospitals can ill-afford to lose while A&E departments are overcrowded and ambulances are outside waiting to offload patients. With so many Covid patients taking up beds, it said: “We continue to be very worried about the ability of ambulances to respond. Losing a whole bunch of other beds due to Covid would just be a really horrible situation [creating] pressure on elective surgery and ambulance waits. There are some really difficult trade-offs to be made there.” our protection? symptoms, and sometimes does not matter whether After 2½ years of the pandemic, each of us has they might be fairly unpleasant,” said Ball. “The they were admitted for the virus or a broken leg — any
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July 2022 — M2CC Newsletter

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