However, the main reason is the high and rising level of staff absence, with around 15% off, either ill with Covid or isolating. Staff have worked tirelessly to try to maintain services and deliver the highest quality of healthcare to local people.īut Covid admissions are rising sharply (from 126 on 19 December to 359 on 2 January), as are inpatient diagnoses (193 to 738 for the same period), and in some hospitals more than one in five patients have Covid (though this is not translating into critical care pressure at present). Hospitals in Greater Manchester have paused some non-urgent surgery and appointments due to the rising impact of Covid.Ī statement by Greater Manchester Combined Authority said the temporary measure, implemented from Tuesday, will not affect cancer and urgent care, including cardiac surgery, vascular surgery and transplantation.Īround 15% of staff are currently absent and, in some hospitals, more than one in five patients have Covid.ĭiagnostic services, including endoscopy, and the majority of out-patient services, will continue wherever possible. The cabinet is expected to announce any new measures on Wednesday.įurther restrictions could be imposed on nightclubs and entertainment venues, which already require proof of a recent negative test or booster shot.Īll hospital visits have been banned, and sports stadiums are restricted to 50% capacity, down from 75%. On Tuesday, Cyprus registered a daily record of 5,457 new cases in a population of around 1 million, surpassing the New Year’s Eve peak of 5,048, which topped five consecutive daily record highs, AFP reports.Īccording to figures released prior to Tuesday’s data, Cyprus also recorded the world’s highest Covid infection rate per 100,000 people over the past seven days. The Cypriot government is considering whether to introduce new Covid restrictions after recording the world’s highest infection rate per 100,000 people over the previous week. “We should not abandon looking at case numbers,” said Dr Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, “but it is important to acknowledge we’re seeing only a portion of the actual number of cases.”
Still, health experts are not prepared to do away with case counts.
“It’s a more objective measure.” He added: “If I had to choose one metric, I would choose the hospitalisation data.” “Hospitalisations are where the rubber meets the road,” Noymer said. Now, the value of the daily case count is being called into question as never before.Ĭase numbers seem to yield a less useful picture of the pandemic amid the spread of Omicron, which is causing lots of infections but so far does not appear to be as severe in its effects.Ĭase counts have lost relevance, said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. The seven-day rolling average is considered more reliable. The number of new cases recorded on Monday topped an unprecedented 1 million, a figure that may reflect cases that had been held up by reporting delays over the holiday weekend. The daily case counts are also subject to wild swings. US Chief Medical Advisor Dr Anthony Fauci said that with many infections causing few or no symptoms, “it is much more relevant to focus on the hospitalisations as opposed to the total number of cases” while other experts argue that case counts still have value.ĭr Wafaa El-Sadr, director of ICAP, a global health center at Columbia University, said the case count does not appear to be the most important number now and we should be “shifting our focus, especially in an era of vaccination, to really focus on preventing illness, disability and death, and therefore counting those.”ĭaily case counts and their ups and downs have been one of the most closely watched barometers during the outbreak and have been a reliable early warning sign of severe disease and death in previous coronavirus waves.īut they have long been considered an imperfect measure, in part because they consist of primarily of laboratory-confirmed cases of Covid-19, not the actual number of infections out there, which is almost certainly many times higher.
The explosive increase in coronavirus case counts is raising alarm, but some experts believe the focus should instead be on Covid-19 hospital admissions.
00.17 GMT Covid case counts may be losing importance amid Omicron
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