COVID as a nosocomial phenomenon
Squeezing the juice from NHS hospital activity data
The problem with updating your database with the latest official figures from NHS Digital is that you want to go and play with them and invariably end up being distracted. This is precisely what I have gone and done!
In my last newsletter I plotted out COVID admissions proper for all service providers across NHS England, ‘proper’ in this sense meaning people coming in to hospital through the front door (though they may or may not be suffering symptoms and may or may not be infectious and may or may not be carrying SAR-COV-2). Strictly speaking these are not necessarily genuine COVID cases, being people who have tested positive with a controversial diagnostic test, though it is convenient to refer to them as such. On the same plot I plonked COVID admissions improper, these being inpatients who tested positive at some point during their stay. By definition these people did not attend hospital because of COVID and either caught the genuine virus whilst waiting for an operation or caught a…