The Omicron Lag

And what this means for the UK

Picture: biznews.com

South Africa’s Omicron wave is nearing it’s end, but what can we learn from it? It seems Omicron is behaving differently to previous waves, in that it has a much bigger lag between cases and deaths. In the UK we are following the same pattern, almost to the day, but we started approximately three weeks later.

Before I continue, let me just add that the stats, figures and predictions I will be using in this article are those that are reported. They don’t differentiate between ‘with Covid’ or ‘from Covid’ or whether or not the hospitalisations are incidental or not. However, they are the numbers that have been used to date and will be used, on the news, in the future.

Firstly, looking at cases.

Cases started rising around 21 November and peaked on 18 December (27 days later). They are now firmly on the way down. Cases in the UK rose for a similar amount of days and peaked on 5 January - a lag, when compared with South Africa of 18 days. Cases in the UK are firmly on the way down now as well.

Next, to hospitalisations.

Hospitalisations in the UK and South Africa started to rise at around the same time cases started to rise. They also peaked at roughly the same time as cases with the UK around 16 days behind South Africa.

Finally, and most importantly, looking at deaths and what makes Omicron different to previous waves.

In the three previous South African waves, deaths peaked 3 weeks, 3 days and 18 days respectively after cases peaked. However, here we are 4 weeks later and deaths were still accelerating upwards until yesterday when there was a small dip. Any day now we may be able to call the peak but not quite yet. In previous waves, when cases had peaked, deaths were also near their peak. However, this time, deaths only started to show an increase once the peak of cases had been reached. This is probably due to the speed of Omicron infections.

South Africa only had 31 deaths per day (7 day rolling average) when cases peaked but as of yesterday this was on 125.29 (4 fold increase).

If we apply the same ratios and timelines to the UK, we started with 171 deaths per day at the beginning of January (when cases peaked) so using the same 4 fold increase we will be seeing 684 deaths per day on 1 February. Hopefully, this will be the peak but as I said earlier, we can’t know this yet.

This will be a real test for the booster vaccines. If the UK performs better than South Africa and my numbers above are incorrect (as predictions usually are) then the booster campaign will have been a success (at least in the short term). If South Africa performs better than the UK then we need to further question the vaccines and natural immunity (although the older population will play a factor as well).

I am glad that all the talk of lockdowns has disappeared but I still question why. The last time deaths were at this level (End of October 2020) we were put into a lockdown. Hospital admissions are also higher now than they were then. Hopefully, as shown above, hospitalisations will have peaked and that is the reason why but I still find the change in attitude, both from the politicians and the press, interesting.