The Omicron variant

Doubt it. It wouldn't be much use anyway because they don't test every case so they probably wouldn't know who had which variant. They just take a representative sample of positive cases and test them to see how many are Omicron and extrapolate from there to estimate the national trends.

Given the number of people self diagnosing with Omicron, you'd think people actually know which variant they have. But they're just talking through their hat unless they have their covid case confirmed and sequenced. Some people are diagnosing themselves with Omicron when they haven't even had a PCR test.

I knew some goody two shoes would come along. Of course I don’t wish it on anyone.

All variants have had mild symptoms for the vast majority of people

Big time. The telegraph is ultra conservative right wing extremist shite. No surprise at all to see 'the usuals' on here using it as a reference.

Omicron does genuinely seem to be different, both on the mild side and, importantly, on the chances of being hospitalised from it.

I'd suggest a lot of deep breaths for you and that you should stay away from any COVID/Omicron information for at least two weeks. IMO, the bottom end of the NPHET optimistic projection of 850 or so is about as bad as it will get here.

Complete nonsense, as before. You're ignoring our high testing levels and very low death rates. Maybe you have an agenda, maybe not.

As a contrast Poland today had 15,571 cases and 794 deaths. That's the region where Omicron is thriving. Poland had only 1,388 cases more than us with a population of 37.8 million, 7.5 times the size of Ireland's. Our current death rate is 8 per day. Thus a country with an enormously smaller case rate than ours that should have 7.5 times the deaths actually has 99.3 times the deaths of Ireland. Incontrovertible facts, but I'm aware that you're not a fan of facts in any form.

Ireland is doing well and quite easy to prove.

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Here is the relevant parts of the article ( copy & paste )

Just one fifth of the weekly rise in Covid inpatients was caused by people admitted to hospital because of the virus, figures suggest. 

The most up-to-date NHS data show that on December 21, there were 6,245 beds occupied by coronavirus patients in English hospitals - an increase of 259 from the previous week. 

But within that increase, just 45 patients were admitted because of the virus, with the remaining 214 in hospital for other conditions but having also tested positive - so called “incidental Covid” admissions.

Critics of the data say it is wrong to include incidental figures in the daily updates of admissions and patient totals, as they can include someone with a broken leg who has just also tested positive on admission, but may be completely asymptomatic. 

'Not the same disease we were seeing a year ago'

The growing prevalence of omicron in the community also means that there are far more people likely to test positive on entering hospital, compared to during previous waves. 

Overall, nearly 30 per cent of people currently in hospital with Covid are “incidental” cases - 1,813 out of 6,245 - the highest it has been since the NHS started releasing the figures in the summer.

The number of incidental Covid cases has been rising in recent weeks because omicron is far more infectious than delta, meaning that many people will be entering hospital unknowingly infected.

In the previous week, December 7 to December 14 - when the vast majority of hospitalisations were still delta - some 59 per cent of the 289 weekly rise was primarily Covid.

Why skewed? In Ireland we had an average of 8 deaths a day last week and 7 the week before. Meanwhile countries testing ffar less than us and producing far less cases have death rates multiple times ours. That's the skewering you should focus on, our high figures pointing to us being in an Omicron hotspot whereas the reverse is true and we're amongst the very lowest death rates in Europe.

Focus on the hospitalisations, ICU patients and deaths. Ireland is doing relatively well and that will continue.

Ours are confirmed deaths and probable deaths, as per ECDC guidelines.

Ah, so this is the definition from the ECDC website :

Mortality monitoring should be conducted according to the WHO definition:

A COVID-19 death is defined for surveillance purposes as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease (e.g., trauma). There should be no period of complete recovery between the illness and death.

A death due to COVID-19 may not be attributed to another disease (e.g. cancer) and should be counted independently of pre-existing conditions that are suspected of triggering a severe course of COVID-19.

 Number of deaths due to COVID-19 should be reported to TESSy on weekly base (case-based or aggregated data).

It is hospital admissions now we need to watch, along with key workers due isolation rules, shortage of staff in roles.

What are the German restrictions?

I had it over Xmas, bad headache, semi mild aches n pains, no sore throat, to chest infection, tickly cough though. Only lasted 3 days.

Wasn't that graph taken from a sample of just a few hundred cases? If it was really true that only 20% of UK Covid hospital patients had been admitted with Covid-19, the entire media would be all over the story.