Stay out of the hospitals

As Karl Denninger and the South Koreans figured out more than a year ago, hospitals are the primary zone of viral transmission.

Up to 40 per cent of coronavirus infections in hospital patients during the first wave of the pandemic could have been caught on NHS wards, scientists have claimed in evidence presented to No10’s top advisers.

SAGE today released a document submitted to the panel that claimed stopping the spread of the virus in hospitals may have led to a ‘substantial’ reduction in the number of deaths in the first wave. 

And this nosocomial transmission — as it is medically called — meant the first phase of the UK’s coronavirus crisis was ‘prolonged, potentially by several weeks’, they said. 

The spread of the virus on wards has been a problem for the NHS throughout the crisis, with hospitals that have more Covid patients finding it harder to manage. Although staff must wear protective equipment at all times and Covid and non-Covid patients are segregated, the virus still spreads from people who don’t have any symptoms or who get false negative test results. 

The SAGE paper, published today, suggested that as many as 36,152 of around 90,000 people who were diagnosed with the virus in hospital between February and July 2020 had caught it in hospital.

Of course, this violates the narrative, because as the South Korean hospital study showed, the virus is not in the air. That’s why all the mask wearing doesn’t make any difference. The most effective way to avoid contact with it is to wash your hands a lot.