Almost one in three younger women admitted are currently or recently pregnant
In his memoir of having Covid-19, the poet Michael Rosen recalled doctors telling him he had a 50–50 chance of surviving mechanical ventilation.
This advice was optimistic: of ventilated over-70s in the first two waves, almost 70% died. That statistic, and other sobering numbers, is in weekly reports from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC) covering around 40,000 critically ill patients with Covid-19. These reports reveal major changes between the first wave up to August 2020 and the far fewer patients in the current wave since May 2021.
