COVID-19 News: While the World Is Concerned About China’s COVID-19 Situation, No Media Is Reporting About UK’s COVID Crisis And The Collapse of The NHS!

COVID-19 News: In the past few days, since Thailand Medical News first broke the warning about the possible impact from Chinese travelers after the relaxation of travel measures by Chinese authorities and also about the lack of genomic sequencing data from China, the Western mainstream media has only been focusing on various issues on China but have failed to report about the unfolding COVID-19 crisis countries in their own home countries like the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/covid-19-news-china-to-release-human-bioweapons-to-spread-more-virulent-variants-globally-as-it-relaxes-all-border-controls-on-the-8th-of-january-2023
 
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-covid-19-news-china-bans-all-private-companies-and-also-researchers-from-genomic-sequencing-of-new-sars-cov-2-variants
 
In the last 24 hours, the world saw 443,510 new COVID-19 infections and 1,393 new COVID-19 deaths.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
 



Mind you with lots of countries not doing any testing nor even reporting COVID-19 data, these underreported figures still sets the tone for a worrisome projection of what is to come in 2023 as even in December 2019 when the first outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 was detected in Wuhan, China…..we did not face such kinetics.
 
To make matters worse, we now have more than 740 new SARS-CoV-2 variants, sub-lineages and recombinant variants in circulation and the new Omicron sub-lineages are rapidly evolving and spawning interesting mutations.
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/2023-to-start-with-more-740-new-sars-cov-2-sub-lineages-and-recombinant-variants-in-circulation,-most-will-not-kill-immediately-but-rather-slowly
 
What is interesting is really what is brewing in the United Kingdom that not only facing a uptick in COVID-19 infections in the last few weeks but also various other respiratory infections ranging from influenza, RSV, Adenovirus, Strep A and also Pneumocystis Jirovecii.
 
In the last 24 hours, data from the Zoe app showed that there were more than 237,296 new symptomatic COVID-19 infections in the last 24 hours! The country has seen an average of between 160,000 to 220,000 new symptomatic COVID-19 infections per day for the last few weeks since the start of December.
https://health-study.joinzoe.com/data
 
The UKHSA data shows that the COVID-19 hospital admission rate for week 50 was 9.56 per 100,000 population, an increase from 6.61 in the previous week.
t;https://www.gov.uk/government/news/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports-published
 
While there are no proper updates yet with regards to COVID-19 situation for weeks 51 and 52 as the British authorities are well known for their laziness and slowness, various COVID-19 News reports posted by NHS doctors and online social media postings are showing that most hospitals in the UK are literally at the verge of collapsing to high volumes of COVID-19 infected individuals needing hospitalization.
https://twitter.com/doctor_oxford/status/1608896410883354625
 
https://twitter.com/Lucie_Cocker/status/1608519833435480069
 
https://twitter.com/DrRobgalloway/status/1608171046867435522
 
https://twitter.com/doctor_oxford/status/1608898709735215104
 
https://twitter.com/Yemso/status/1608439604155121664
 
https://twitter.com/JujuliaGrace/status/1608725063163084803
 
https://twitter.com/LiamThorpECHO/status/1608755253868138496
 
https://twitter.com/LiamThorpECHO/status/1608755260285423616
 
https://twitter.com/danielgoyal/status/1608790096744189952

While the British media has been showing scenes of hospitals In China, they failed to show what is happening in the United Kingdom at the moment, which in some cases is worse than what is happening in China!
https://twitter.com/TizBroken/status/1608178706261970944
 
https://twitter.com/beattrice_/status/1608794501954568193
 
https://twitter.com/EnemyInAState/status/1607797379297644547
 
https://twitter.com/irishdmb/status/1608807040897675265
 
https://twitter.com/DrLindaDykes/status/1608979285284622336
 
https://twitter.com/BladeoftheS/status/1608018472373751810
 
https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1605253893411274752
 
https://twitter.com/EnemyInAState/status/1608893032463732739
 
While many European virologists and variant tracking experts that can be found on twitter have made claims that all the new emerging variants and sub-lineages are mild and do not cause disease severity, it would be interesting to know why many Brits are flocking to hospitals and getting admitted. I doubt it is due to some kind of ‘fetish’ but rather they are really getting sick and disease severity is truly occurring as we also are seeing many younger adults without any existing comorbidities and who have received all the necessary shots, still developing severe health conditions after contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
 
Just like China, it seems to be difficult to procure accurate and credible daily COVID-19 death rates in the United Kingdom as the Tory government has developed a variety of reporting strategies to conceal this true data. While current estimates indicate that an average of about 75 Brits are dying daily, we think that the actual figures could be as high as 5 to six-fold and not including excess deaths linked to COVID-19, which are also rising exponentially especially heart failures! It is really ironic that British mainstream media are accusing China for lack of transparency concerning the COVID-19 crisis there while their own government under the Tories are no different!
 
It is interesting to note that the British government has stopped providing updates since the 28^th Of October 2022 as to what predominant SARS-CoV-2 variants or sub-lineages are circulating around. This is no difference from what China is doing!
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/covid-19-variants-identified-in-the-uk-latest-updates
 
Reports from certain researchers have shown that the new XBB.1.5 variant is already gaining steam in the UK.
https://twitter.com/RajlabN/status/1608359289340727297/photo/1
 
https://twitter.com/vipintukur/status/1609042429872844800
 
However, a number of new sub-lineages have also emerged in the United Kingdom with some believed to be driving disease severity.
 
One is a new BQ.1.1.22 sub-lineage spotting a spike mutation S256P.
https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/1492
 
We also have a BQ.1.1 sub-lineage with S:Y144- + S:S494P mutations and another is a BQ1.1 sub-lineage with S:M153I +S:Y144- + S:S494P mutations
https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/1483
 
https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/1484
 
There is even a recombinant variant ie CR.1 (BA.5.2.18.1) x XBB.1 recombinant that has been detected in England!
https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/1460
 
There are also reports of a new BN.1.2 variant with a new E:D72G mutation that is also causing some concerns.
https://twitter.com/mrmickme/status/1607544702672474112
 
In fact with the current COVID-19 kinetics in the UK indicating that almost 1 out of every 10 people is  infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and almost 23 percent of all new infections are reinfections and with co-infections also rising not only involving other SARS-Cov-2 variants or sub-lineages but also with other respiratory viruses, along with the fact that there is a huge diversity of vaccine and booster status in the country and also many immunocompromised individuals especially many with HIV, it is little wonder that the next more pathogenic and virulent SARS-CoV-2 variants or sub-lineages would likely emerge from the United Kingdom, where we also have a majority of the population who have hygiene standards that are no difference from the Chinese!
 
It is also interesting that the British government under the Tories will no longer publishing any COVID-19 data from January 2023 onwards!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11573653/UK-Government-stop-publishing-Covid-data-January-country-living-virus.html
 
So, while the rest of the word is concerned about Chinese travelers who could serve as potential human vectors for new SARS-CoV-2 variants or sub-lineages from China, they should also be concerned about all travelers originating from the UK as well and start imposing stricter testing and quarantine rules for these potential vectors as well!
 
We have yet to cover about the COVID-19 crisis unfolding in the United States, Canada, Germany and will do that in separate articles.
 
But rest assured that 2023 is indeed going to be a fun year.
 
For the latest COVID-19 News, keep on logging to Thailand Medical News.