In terms of Covid19, we have come through 2022, our first year of ‘Living with Covid’ which was published at the end of February 2022.
This was following the success of the vaccine, which very significantly reduced the severity of Covid19 infections for the majority of people. As shown in Figure 1, we started to see much higher rates of people infected but a far lower proportion in hospital because of the infection.
Though this has enabled the ‘Living with Covid strategy to be implemented, although the infection itself can be mild for some, we have still seen many people needing time off work, suffering from symptoms that persist (Long Covid) and there have still been significant numbers of people hospitalised and dying of the infection.
