Bristol is experiencing another wave of coronavirus, with hundreds of people across the city catching the virus every single day.
And so far this year, doctors have confirmed that at least 135 people in Bristol have died from coronavirus - equating to a rate of one person every 30 hours.
But while the pressures on the NHS in Bristol is at an all-time high - largely because of staffing shortages, bed-blocking and the knock-on effects of two years of the pandemic - the numbers of people seriously ill with Covid in the city’s hospitals is only a fraction of the levels experienced before the mass vaccination programme of 2021.
Read more: Bristol NHS warns people to 'stay away' from A&E due to 'incredible pressure'
On the second anniversary of the week Bristol went into the very first coronavirus lockdown, Bristol Live took a detailed look at the situation with the virus in the city right now. Nationally, it is reported that more people currently have Covid-19 than ever before - estimates put the number of cases at 4.26 million in the past week.
Experts said Covid-19 infections have risen sharply across most of the UK and are nearing record levels in England, while both Scotland and Wales have reached an all-time high, new figures show. Across the UK as a whole, 4.26 million people were likely to have had coronavirus last week – just short of the 4.30 million in the first week of 2022, which was the highest total since estimates began.
But in Bristol, how many people have the virus? How many end up in hospital? How many are seriously ill and how many people are still dying from the virus? We sought to answer those questions below.
Cases
With no covid restrictions in place at all in Bristol, the virus is spreading quickly again. The Omicron wave which swept through Bristol in December and peaked in early January had been slowing down in February. The ‘case rate’ in Bristol - the number of new cases every week per 100,000 people - had dropped from a record 2,003 in the first week of January, down to 414 at the end of February. But the effects of the end of all Covid regulations soon kicked in, and the virus began spreading more quickly again.
Since the start of March, the case rate in Bristol has almost tripled in less than four weeks - up to 1,140 as of last Friday. The most recent case rate recorded by the Government is 1,124, recorded on Saturday, with an estimated 5,240 people testing positive for the virus last week.
But given that testing is far less widespread now, and with the imminent end of free covid testing kits, experts believe the true scale of the virus’ spread in Bristol is greater.
Hospitals
While the number of people catching the virus is as high now as it was in January and higher than most of 2021, the number of people ending up in hospital with the virus is lower than during previous waves of Covid. Bristol’s two hospital trusts are the North Bristol NHS Trust, which runs Southmead Hospital, and University Hospitals Trust, which run a range of hospitals including the Bristol Royal Infirmary, the Children’s Hospital and Weston General.
Both trusts record the number of people admitted to the hospital who have coronavirus. But that could be a range of seriousness - everyone from the person who comes in with something else and is then tested for covid and happens to have the virus, with no symptoms, to the patient who is admitted suffering from serious effects of Covid itself.
Neither health trust has provided a breakdown of those numbers of ‘incidental’ Covid cases, but other hospitals in London have - and their information has shown that the more widespread the virus is in the population, the higher percentage of Covid admissions are not because of Covid. Some studies showed that, during the Omicron wave in December, as many as 40 per cent of the 'covid admissions' to some London hospitals were people who were being admitted for something else.
In terms of admissions to hospital - the latest figures are that on Tuesday this week, March 22, there were 63 people in Southmead Hospital with Covid-19. That number has risen steadily in the past month, but peaked last week at 70. Back in the middle of January, the number of people with Covid in Southmead on any one day went above 100 twice.
It was at that time, back at the start of January, that the Government started building a temporary 'Nightingale Hub' in the car park of Southmead Hospital, to cater for a feared overflow of Covid patients. But cases and hospitalisations dropped in February, and work to dismantle the 'hub' began earlier this month.
But patients are still coming in to Southmead with Covid in large numbers. In total, 116 people were admitted with coronavirus to Southmead Hospital last week, in the seven days to last Sunday - a rough average of around 16 a day. The numbers at the University Hospitals Bristol and Weston Trust are similar. On Tuesday, UHBW recorded 70 people on their wards with coronavirus. That’s a sharp rise from just 19 on March 1 - it’s gone up more than three and a half times in just three weeks.
But it’s still a lot fewer than earlier in the winter - the number of patients with Covid peaked at 127 on February 6 this year. On the worst day of the pandemic for the Bristol Royal Infirmary, there were 258 Covid patients, back in January 2021, and 199 at Southmead at around the same time.
So numbers are fluctuating wildly as the virus spreads and diminishes over this winter. But because information about whether those Covid patients are there because they have Covid or not is scant - the key indicator of whether the virus is dangerously affecting people’s health comes from the numbers of Covid patients on ventilators.
Serious covid cases
These will be people on mechanical ventilation because Covid has so badly affected them they need help to breathe. During the very worst days and weeks of the pandemic - in January 2021 - there were 32 patients at Southmead Hospital on ventilators, and 36 at the Bristol Royal Infirmary.
The difference the widespread Covid vaccinations have made are striking. Despite higher case numbers this winter and now than at the start of 2021, there are far fewer Covid patients needing ventilation now.
On Tuesday this week, there were just two people at Southmead Hospital on ventilators with Covid, the latest day figures are available for. It had peaked at five last week, and was as high as 11 in January, and 14 in December, but that’s still less than half the number of the previous winter’s peak.
At the BRI hospital, there were three patients on ventilators with Covid on Tuesday. That figure has not risen higher than 10 at any point during 2022. In mid-January 2021, it was as high as 36.
Deaths
But Coronavirus is still killing people in Bristol - on an almost daily basis. The Government’s main statistic that counts covid deaths records it as anyone who died within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test.
However, that includes people who had covid, recovered and died of something else. The more accurate measure of how many people are dying from Covid-19 is the number of people are dying of coronavirus, and Covid-19 is being recorded in their death certificate by a doctor, as a cause of death.
Those figures are slightly more out-of-date - the most recent figures cover the week ending on March 11, so a fortnight ago. But in Bristol, they show that since the start of 2022, a total of 55 people who lived in Bristol have died of Covid-19. That doesn’t include South Gloucestershire, where 36 people have died since the first week of January this year. In North Somerset, a total of 44 people have died from Covid-19 since the start of this year.
In all, across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, a total of 135 people have died of Coronavirus in the first 67 days of 2021 - more than two a day.
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