Published Thursday 3 February 2022 at 10:40
Dominic Harrison: Director of Public Health and Wellbeing; Blackburn with Darwen
England saw a sharp rise in the numbers of new Covid infections reported from 1st February, up about 500,000, as the government changed its reporting system to show the number of Covid ‘episodes’ not just ‘cases’.
Previously, reported Covid cases excluded people who tested positive more than once. From 1st February, positive tests for any variant of COVID-19 within a 90-day time period are now considered part of the same case ‘episode’, but positive tests 90 days after the first reported positive test will now be reported as a reinfection ‘episode’ and included in new reports.
With the arrival of the Omicron variant, the proportion of reinfection episodes has increased to almost 10% of all cases – it was estimated as about 2-4% previously. Some research reports suggest that up to 60% of new Omicron cases may have been previously infected with a different Covid variant, but not everyone infected in the first wave of the pandemic was tested.
The good news on reinfections though is that there is no evidence that reinfection leads to more serious illness. In fact, all the available evidence suggests that reinfections are less likely to lead to serious disease – that is, disease that requires hospital treatment or that could be fatal. It is possible to catch the same variant twice, but the emergence of new variants as the pandemic has progressed means that if you are infected on more than one occasion, it is much more likely to be with a different variant.
The overall infection rates across England are continuing to show the same pattern as last week. Cases rates across Lancashire continue to fall, as do hospitalisations. Even the case rate in 5 to 9 year olds has now shown a plateau and fall in the last seven days – although we must not discount reduced testing and reporting of episodes as a possible cause for this.
The Omicron wave first rose and fell in some southern regions of England, but it is now rising again. South East, South West and East of England regions are all showing a resurging rate of Omicron infection. This new wave of case rate rises seems to be moving up the UK and may arrive in Lancashire by early next week.
If a growing number of any new cases in Lancashire are mainly reinfections, the effect may be minimal on hospital admissions, but a resurgent case rate will trigger a continued high rate of staff absences, school absences and family disruption.
It seems that every wave of this pandemic presents a slightly different profile of challenges. Our main task now is to learn how to ‘live safely with Covid’. This will mean managing each successive new variant wave and minimising the negative health, social and economic impacts on our lives. By March we should have a clear national plan on how to do this.