Wes Streeting needs to talk about Covid
If you listened to the news and our politicians you would think that the word Covid had been banned from use. Four years ago the country was in turmoil as a result of Covid. Now, it is as if there is a determined campaign to prove that Covid no longer happens by simply pretending that it does not exist.
It does still exist. One of my sons, who does not live with me, happens to have it right now. That is unsurprising. There is, as Prof Christina Pagel, who came to public prominence over this issue, has noted on her Substack a new and significant wave of Covid going on right now. This is the data on hospital admissions:
Scotland still monitors wastewater for Covid. The UK does not. This is their data:
There is, as the evidence shows, a lot of Covid about, despite vaccinations. And, there are real consequences of that.
As Prof Pagel says on her blog:
England is in the middle of a large Covid wave, hopefully just starting the downward slope. Hospital admissions are lower than they were during 2023 peaks, and fortunately this wave came not long after the Spring booster campaign which will have protected many in our most vulnerable populations.
Although it’s good that hospital admissions are nowhere near what they were at the pandemic’s height, waves of infection are never good news. Many people will be off work while sick and some (perhaps 1-2% of infected people) will go on to develop new Long Covid. The percentage developing new Long Covid has come down because of vaccination and previous infection, but it is not zero and there are still few effective ways to treat Long Covid.
It is also self evident that Covid is in no way a winter respiratory bug - its behaviour is nothing like flu or RSV, the other main respiratory viruses that can cause severe illness and do every winter. While flu and RSV are pretty much confined to November to March, Covid waves can and do happen at any time of year. We are still in three to four waves a year, each causing some disruption to people’s lives, employment and the NHS.
What she is not saying and which I will add are three things.
First, if Wes Streeting was as serious about healthcare as he claims, he would be talking about this and be demanding that there be data collected on it. It is a political scandal that this is not the case.
Second, if the government as a whole is serious about productivity it should be taking this seriously. It clearly is not, as no one is talking about it.
Third, it is absurd that the government ignores World Health Organisation warnings on this issue. They are, for example, suggesting that mask-wearing be mandatory on public transport, but no action is being taken on this.
We have, in that case, a new Health Secretary who seems unaware of one of the major reasons why we have a health crisis in this country and is happy to go along with the Tory propaganda on this issue, promoted to make it look as if Boris Johnson beat Covid. He did not. It has not been broken. Streeting needs to talk about Covid.
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