Thorpe Bay

Warning: Covid Rant!

On 20/12/2021 19/12/2021 The Guardian reported “About nine out of 10 of those needing the most care in hospital are unvaccinated, Javid said.” This surprised me as SAGE has stated “most patients admitted to hospital with covid after 16 June 2021 were fully vaccinated “. Here’s some figures.

In the four weeks up to 28th November 2021 about 36% of Covid hospital admissions were unvaccinated with 61% fully vaccinated.

As at the end of July 2021 about 73% of Covid patients in ICU were unvaccinated with about 20% fully vaccinated. These are out of date figures but one assumes that in the last 5 months, as more people have become fully vaccinated, their percentage will rise while the unvaccinated will fall. One can also assume that as the vaccine is less effected against Omicron a larger percentage of hospitalisations will be vaccinated.

It is uncertain where Javid (Secretary of State for Health and Social Care) gets his figures from although he may be referring to an article in the Sunday Times that referred to ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) patients… of which there were only 150 between July and November 2021.

So, when Javid says “9 out of 10 patients…” it seems he may be referring to those 150 people.

As far as I can remember there are about 140,000 hospital beds in the UK. At present the latest figures say about 7,500 are taken up with Covid patients. The last I recall about 14,000 beds were taken up by fit people who had nowhere else to go because our care system has nowhere to put them. The UK also has one of the lowest hospital bed per capita ratios in Europe. The NHS was already on it’s knees before Covid etc. etc.

Food for thought...

Edit: How interesting. The Guardian has since updated it's article to read "About nine out of 10 Covid patients needing the most care in hospital were unvaccinated, Javid said, referring to people requiring extra corporeal membrane oxygenation for severe respiratory failure between July and November."


The article is still dated 19/12/2021 and was updated on 21/12/2. The Guardian  makes no mention of this text change which probably says something about the quality of that newspaper..