Is the pandemic over?

England’s approach to COVID restrictions this January is very different to last January. It’s also worlds away from how European neighbours are reacting.

Many countries are now imposing tighter travel restrictions, and implementing lockdowns, while England (and to some degree the UK) is moving in the opposite direction.

For example, the “red list” of countries has been scrapped, as has the need to get a pre-departure test when travelling. Isolation periods have also been reduced and were masks not mandatory in indoor public spaces, you could be mistaken for thinking the pandemic was over.

England’s libertarian approach comes as the country’s infection rates hit an all time high. One in 15 people in the UK had COVID in the last week of December. Not since the pandemic started, or in the last year, in the last week! 🀯

So why is the UK making these decisions?

Do the statistics offer any justification for these changes?

Last year I posted several articles looking at the UK’s COVID-19 data and exploring the effectiveness of vaccination. Things have changed a lot since, so here’s an update.

UK COVID-19 Stats

The UK is now 90% vaccinated. Nine in 10 people aged 12 and over have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Around 80% are “fully vaccinated” having had two doses, and around 60% have also had a booster (or third) jab. πŸ’‰

While hospitalisations started to rise quite rapidly at the end of the December, they’re also still nowhere near to the 40k numbers we saw last January.

Why is this?

There are many reasons, but the two biggest seem to be: Vaccinations and Omicron.

Vaccinations

Vaccination has undoubtedly helped to weaken the link between infections and deaths. Despite there being around 3 million more infections in December 2021 than January 2021, there were around 30k fewer COVID related deaths.

This chart shows that link between cases and deaths.

December 2021 COVID-19 cases aligned to deaths

You can see last year in weeks 44 and 45 (January 2021) cases and deaths hit their peak – I’ve used this as the baseline maximum, 100%. Until week ~60 (May 2021) cases and deaths were fairly well aligned, cases went up, deaths went up. However that link has been slowly weakening. Since May 2021, cases have risen and fallen, with deaths hardly moving, and that’s in no small part thanks to vaccinations. By May 2021, around 1 in 3 people were fully vaccinated and 2 in 3 had had at least one dose.

In week 95 (the last full week I have data for) deaths were around 11% of January 2021 levels, while cases were almost 190%. The virus no longer has the same ability to kill as it once did.

N.B. Cases shown aren’t positive tests, but the ONS infection study estimates. Deaths are those within 28 days of a positive test, by date of death. Deaths have been moved forward by one week, to better align them to cases.

Omicron

The other contributing factor is Omicron. In the last month, UK COVID cases have been rising exceedingly fast. This is in part due to the more infectious Omicron strain of the virus.

5th of January 2022 COVID-19 variants by countryAt the start of December 2021, around 1% of UK cases were the Omicron variant, with Delta making up the vast majority of all cases. Last week, 96% of all cases were Omicron. That’s insane growth! Omicron took over as the dominant strain in around 2 weeks, almost wiping Delta infections out in the space of a month.

You can explore this more with this fantastic tool by Our World In Data – the University of Oxford.

Omicron appears to be easier to spread, more dominant, but less deadly. The levels of Omicron in the UK are surely also helping to keep deaths low – compared with if all cases were the Delta strain.

Do the statistics justify fewer restrictions?

So do the statistics give us confidence that England’s approach at the moment is well founded? To a degree, yes. It’s unclear if the decisions have been made based on science, or politics, but so far at least, England’s libertarian approach looks like it offers a good balance between freedom, autonomy and safety.

The more cases there are, the greater the risk of mutation. That could be seen as a concern, but mutation lead to Omicron defeating Delta, which (so far) hasn’t turned out to be a bad thing.

Is the COVID-19 pandemic over?

With more global cases than ever before, it’s undeniable that COVID-19 is still very much a pandemic. But, if we’re able to live with the virus in general circulation, without mass deaths or hospitalisations (just like we do with flu each winter) there is hope, that we may be nearing the beginning of the end of the period where COVID ruled our lives.

Live in hope. ☺️

England out of the World Cup 3 times in two years!

Just to let you know this is article number 50!
What a fantastic milestone!
πŸ™‚

South Africa 2010, England was knocked out of the FIFA Men’s World Cup by Germany being beaten 4-1 – although goal line technology would have shown that it was 4-2.


On Sunday, England was knocked out of the FIFA Women’s World Cup to France on penalties.

The final blow for England came as its UK team was knocked out of the 2011 RoboCup in the group stages just a few days ago.

The RoboCup took place in Istanbul on Saturday the 9th and Sunday the 10th of July.

There were many entrants from a whole range of different countries. The game played was four-a-side football, but only humanoid robots were allowed to compete.

RoboCup Humanoid Football

Some robots playing football to try and win the RoboCup

The UK squad was designed by a team from Edinburgh University. The team’s coach said that they were down by they weren’t out, and that they would be returning next year!

The teams loss was blamed on system bugs, all of which the team thought could have been eradicated, but they just didn’t have the time to fix them before the game.

Next year the UK is going to have a much better team

Assistant professor at the School of Informatics, Dr Subramanian Ramamoorthy, stated that if the UK had had an internal RoboCup before hand, to select the best robots and fine tune the hardware, software and strategy, then the team could have performed much better.

2011 was the first year that the UK entered a team, but at the Mexico City RoboCup next year it is hoped that the team will perform much better!

Technology and sport

Should we use more technology in sport? Well it depends on the sport I guess, or does it?


I have been watching a bit of Wimbledon lately and it’s got me thinking about technology and sport. Go back 50 years and technology had a very small part in the sporting world. There was no Hawk-Eye technology in tennis or cricket, meaning that it was purely down to human perception as to whether the point was scored, or out.

Hawk-Eye at Wimbledon

Hawk-Eye technology being used at Wimbledon

This is still true of football. Some say that it “adds to the excitement of the game” but others say that it is time to move on. Last years world cup started serious discussions into the use of technology in the sport, specifically goal line technology. There were incorrectly awarded goals as well as goals not awarded.

England was cheated of a point against Germany when the referee decided not to award a goal. It was hard for the linesman to judge, due to where he was standing, however goal line technology and goal cameras could easily have verified the truth. This wasn’t the case for England though.

England's discounted goal against Germany in the 2010 South African World Cup

The ball clearly went in the goal, however the referee decided that it was not a goal

Many sports have now adopted the use of technology to improve the accuracy of scores/results, athletics, tennis and cricket are just a few. But my question to you is should other sports yet to use the technology, like football, make the switch too, or does technology just not have a place in every sport?