Read on Twitter
The latest admission for England has topped 300 today, and again a question raised is are these "WITH" COVID or "FROM" COVID? Just like yesterday& #39;s analysis of deaths, let& #39;s dig into this question a bit... 1/7 https://twitter.com/Iwontcalmdown/status/1309534620279615489">https://twitter.com/Iwontcalm...
First of all, note that any elective admissions, ie for planned surgery, is preceded by a COVID test. If it& #39;s positive, the admission doesn& #39;t happen. So the only cases that might by chance test positive are emergency admissions for what are believed to be non COVID reasons. 2/7
There are approx 15k such admissions a day. What proportion of them might test positive, yet be totally unrelated? The latest ONS figures give a clue, suggesting that 1 in 500 now has the virus. That would suggest 30, out of the 300 cases. 3/7
That assumes a constant age distribution. But we know that A&E admissions are heavily weighted towards much older ages, and conversely infectivity rates are still heavily skewed towards younger ages. That would suggest that taking 1/500 would be an overstatement. 4/7
We can take data on A&E admissions by age, and the relative infectivity by age groups to adjust for this effect. It reduces the overall number by 15%, so giving a figure of 8.5% 5/7
That assumes that for none of those admitted for apparently unrelated causes, and who subsequently test positive, COVID is a contributory factor. I suspect some will be, but let& #39;s assume not for now. 6/7
