In the North West of England where the Delta outbreak originated, hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths all started to rise quickly too.
Twice in the last week they’ve reported 10 deaths in a day. Just three weeks ago it was averaging 2 a day.
What you're missing out though is that when it kicked off in the NW of England, initially amongst the Asian communities, the vaccination rates were very poor in those areas (for whatever reason, vaccine scepticism, etc ). There then followed a huge surge in vaccination uptake in those Northern towns and guess what, since then the case numbers/hospitalisations/deaths have slowed there. That’s the difference this time around, the efficacy of the vaccines - and has been stated numerous times in this thread, we in Wales have a better vaccination rate than anywhere else in the UK. If pressure on the NHS remains low, and after all, that was the key for closing down everything and restricting our civil liberties (and that means hospitalisations/serious illness remain low), then there is no justification for not lifting remaining restrictions, and certainly not allowing IAW to open, which is what this thread was initially all about (!). And one thing is for sure, we'll know that by July 19, from what happens in England and Scotland in the next couple of weeks. If they open up, then we will have to in Wales pretty soon afterwards, because I don’t think the Welsh public will stand by and let the rest of the UK lift remaining restrictions, while we're still limited in what we can do. And I think there's probably an alignment going on behind the scenes with the devolved governments and Westminster on that July 19 date, even if some still won’t publicise that date now. It's also worth noting from ONS data week ending 11th June, that COVID was responsible for 0.8% of all deaths in England and ten times more people were dying of flu and pneumonia there, than Covid (and even considering that, flu numbers are way down compared with “normal” years when we're mixing). Now ONS data is always a little bit behind but hospitalisations and death rates in England haven’t gone up that steeply since then, which is all positive news. They still remain low despite increasing case numbers. No-one wants any Covid deaths and one is too many - but this thing is here to stay unfortunately and economies have to eventually open up fully, otherwise death rates from poverty alone will far outweigh anything we've seen so far from this dreadful disease. I get it that people are nervous but no-one is forcing anyone to do anything, so if certain people are not comfortable going back to normal life and resuming things like going to watch the Devils, then they don’t have to.
