London hasn’t exceeded its hospital or ICU capacity (though its capacity was recently doubled with the new Nightingale hospital, it has hardly been used), and it has about half of the infection rate of New York—with one estimate here being that the infection rate was 7% in London on the 2nd of April—those cases should have long since progressed and made their way to the hospitals, yet the Nightingale still stands mostly empty (for the love of all eternity, I hope the NHS doesn’t shut the place down because ‘it wasn’t needed’). Probably, London could take New York infection rates and that would just about hit its new capacity.
That fits with anecdotal evidence—I know a nurse who works in a big local hospital, and she told me that although things got pretty dicey over Easter time, with PPE being reused, operating theatres etc. being converted to beds and ICUs, and everyone working incredibly long shifts, nobody was being turned away from the ICUs like in Italy or Spain. The hospitals in London have started to empty out in the last week, as they’re ahead of the rest of the UK, and still it never reached the new capacity with a 7% infection rate before the peak (that came on April 8th, not April 2nd).
Perhaps uncertainty in the Infection hospitalization rate is a better candidate than uncertainty in the IFR—has anyone checked out that 20% figure recently?
London hasn’t exceeded its hospital or ICU capacity (though its capacity was recently doubled with the new Nightingale hospital, it has hardly been used), and it has about half of the infection rate of New York—with one estimate here being that the infection rate was 7% in London on the 2nd of April—those cases should have long since progressed and made their way to the hospitals, yet the Nightingale still stands mostly empty (for the love of all eternity, I hope the NHS doesn’t shut the place down because ‘it wasn’t needed’). Probably, London could take New York infection rates and that would just about hit its new capacity.
That fits with anecdotal evidence—I know a nurse who works in a big local hospital, and she told me that although things got pretty dicey over Easter time, with PPE being reused, operating theatres etc. being converted to beds and ICUs, and everyone working incredibly long shifts, nobody was being turned away from the ICUs like in Italy or Spain. The hospitals in London have started to empty out in the last week, as they’re ahead of the rest of the UK, and still it never reached the new capacity with a 7% infection rate before the peak (that came on April 8th, not April 2nd).
Perhaps uncertainty in the Infection hospitalization rate is a better candidate than uncertainty in the IFR—has anyone checked out that 20% figure recently?