Covid Situation Report: Jun 12, 2025
Report providing the latest information on Covid activity in the UK and other countries. This post is best viewed using the browser or Substack app.
Introduction.
This report belongs to a weekly series summarising the Covid situation across the UK's home nations and other countries.
This week's report covers the latest weekly test positivity rates for England, along with the most recent data for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. An update on the UK’s Spring 2025 Covid booster campaign is given.
The report also provides an update on the impact of the Covid NB.1.8.1 variant on Covid levels in South-East Asia and the Western Pacific regions. Finally, Covid activity in selected European countries and the USA is covered.
Summary.
This week the good news continues with all Covid data indicating low levels across England, Scotland, and Wales.
In England this week, the Covid test positivity increased slightly but remains at relatively low levels.
In Scotland, Covid hospital admissions remained at very low levels. There was a slight increase in Covid detected in wastewater although it remains relatively low.
This week Covid hospital admissions in Wales remained relatively low, whereas admissions for Flu and RSV have virtually stopped.
Unfortunately, at the time of publishing this report there is no update available for Northern Ireland.
The WHO recently declared NB.1.8.1 (sometimes called Nimbus) a variant under monitoring, reporting in it’s May 23 Risk Evaluation that:
Despite a concurrent increase in cases and hospitalizations in some countries where NB.1.8.1 is widespread, current data do not indicate that this variant leads to more severe illness than other variants in circulation.
The NB.1.8.1 variant is dominant in several countries across South-East Asia and the Western Pacific and has been associated with increased Covid activity in Hong Kong and Singapore. However, Covid activity in these countries has peaked and is now falling.
Cases of NB.1.8.1 have recently been identified in Europe and the USA but there are no signs of any significant increases in Covid activity in these regions at the moment.
The NHS Spring 2025 Covid Booster campaign opened on April 1 and will run until June 17, 2025 for England.
To date, 55% of those aged 75 years and older have been vaccinated in England, 61% in Scotland, 51% in Wales and 39% in Northern Ireland.
Those eligible for free vaccinations on the NHS are:
adults aged 75 years and over;
residents in a care home for older adults; and
individuals aged 6 months and over who are immunosuppressed.
Bookings for Spring 2025 booster vaccinations in England are about to close and can be made at the following link until June 16:
Although the booster campaign is soon closing in England, the campaigns in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland close later and are available until June 30.
Details for booking a booster in Scotland can be found here, for Wales here, and for Northern Ireland here.
A reminder that for individuals not covered by the NHS, Covid and Flu vaccinations may be obtainable for a fee at local pharmacies.
As always, it’s important to remember that the risk of hospitalisation from Covid increases significantly with age and for the immunocompromised. Therefore, it is important to take appropriate measures such as self-isolating when experiencing Covid symptoms and enhancing ventilation or wearing masks whenever possible.
Status of main respiratory diseases in England.
Note that the UKHSA National flu and COVID-19 surveillance report has moved to a condensed summer report published every two weeks and is not available this week.
Consequently, this weeks report only provides an update on the test positivity rate which is still published weekly on the UKHSA data dashboard.
This section only provides an update on the latest available data on Covid positivity rates for England. It is important to understand that positivity differs from prevalence, which refers to the overall percentage of Covid in the general population. Appendix 1 provides a more detailed explanation of the difference and why positivity rates are a useful indicator of trends in Covid infection levels.
The following chart shows the test positivity rate for all Covid tests taken, including those outside of hospitals, and is mapped against the UKHSA activity thresholds. The thresholds are based on the historical trend for Covid test positivity and, consequently, represent a relative risk. More details on this approach can be found in the Guide to Covid Surveillance Metrics.
The chart shows that the test positivity rate has continued to increase slowly and is now just above the baseline threshold of activity indicating a relatively low level of risk.
Scotland weekly hospital admissions and test positivity
Scotland continues to publish weekly data on hospital admissions and bed occupancy for Covid as well as wastewater monitoring data. The dashboard for Scotland’s data can be accessed here.
The following panel chart shows the most recent data for weekly Covid hospital admissions depicted in blue, together with the number of beds occupied by Covid patients, shown in orange. The number of occupied beds represent patients being treated for Covid as well as those being treated with Covid.
This week Covid admissions and beds occupied by Covid patients remained broadly stable and at low levels.
Scotland remains the only home nation that is monitoring Covid levels using wastewater sampling and the following chart shows the seven day average of Covid levels found up to Jun 6, 2025.
The wastewater sampling data shows that the high Covid levels observed at the start of August 2024 dropped significantly to very low levels in the first 3 months of 2025. However, there have been slight increases in the past month although levels remain relatively low. It remains to be seen if this signals a summer wave as seen last year.
This week there were just 15 hospital admissions for Flu reported and just 3 for RSV.
Wales Covid hospital admissions.
The following chart provides the trend for weekly hospital admissions in Wales up to week ending Jun 8 2025.
Three weeks ago, hospital admissions for Covid in Wales fell to their lowest level in over two years. However, they have now returned to the slightly higher levels but are still relatively low.
This week there were seven hospital admissions for Flu reported and one for RSV.
Status of main respiratory diseases in Northern Ireland.
Public Health Northern Ireland publish a weekly surveillance report on influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and COVID-19 providing an overview of these infections within Northern Ireland.
Unfortunately, at the time of publishing this situation report there is no updated data available for Northern Ireland.
Spring 2025 Covid Booster Campaign
The NHS Spring 2025 Covid Booster campaign opened on April 1 and will run until June 17, 2025 in England. However, the campaigns in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland close on June 30, 2025. For details on booking a Covid booster in Scotland click here, for Wales click here, and for Northern Ireland here.
Those eligible for all Home Nations are older people in care homes, individuals 75 years and older, the immunosuppressed aged 6 months and over.
The data in this section is only for NHS vaccinations and does not include privately administered doses.
The first chart in this section compares vaccine coverage for those aged 75 years and older for each of the Home Nations. The date of the latest available data is in parenthesis after the Home Nations name.
The table chart shows that the increase in coverage for England is slowing down and this means that Scotland now has a higher coverage for those aged 75 years and older than England. Coverage for Northern Ireland remains the lowest.
The following chart shows the number of Covid vaccinations given by week for each of the booster campaigns in England.
The Spring 2025 booster campaign has administered 3,845,650 doses in England to date. All Spring booster campaigns have the same eligibility criteria so it is possible to compare across each year. With two weeks of the 2025 campaign remaining, it now seems very likely that it will fall short of the doses administered in the previous years Spring booster campaigns.
Covid levels in South-East Asia and Wester Pacific regions.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) designated the variant NB.1.8.1 (sometimes called Nimbus) a variant under monitoring on May 23, 2025. A reminder that in their NB.1.8.1 Risk Evaluation Report they concluded that the present global health risk was low but uncertain. In reaching this conclusion the report stated that:
NB.1.8.1 is growing rapidly compared to co-circulating variants. However, NB.1.8.1 exhibits only marginal additional immune evasion over LP.8.1. While there are reported increases in cases and hospitalizations in some of the countries, which have the highest proportion of NB.1.8.1, there are no reports to suggest that the associated disease severity is higher as compared to other circulating variants.
The report also noted that ‘Currently approved COVID-19 vaccines are expected to remain effective to this variant against symptomatic and severe disease.’
The following panel chart shows the latest prevalence data for the NB.1.8.1 variant across a number of countries. The grey bars indicates when data is not yet available.
It is important to note that countries use different methods to sequence variants and are therefore not directly comparable. For example, Hong Kong sequences samples from wastewater monitoring whereas New Zealand sequences positive test samples. Also there is a low number of samples sequenced making the numbers uncertain.
Despite these caveats, it can be seen that NB.1.8.1 variant is growing fast in South East Asia and growing in Australia and New Zealand. But what is the impact of these increased levels of NB1.8.1 on Covid activity in these countries?
Data from Hong Kong provides a comprehensive picture available of the impact of NB.1.8.1 on Covid activity and the following panel chart shows the recent trend for Covid test positivity, Covid levels in wastewater, and the impact on health as measured by the consultation rate for Covid in out-patient clinics.
The charts indicate that NB.1.81 drove a significant increase in Covid activity resulting in an impact on health. However, the recent peak in Covid activity has been reached and these key indicators continue to fall significantly. The latest COVID-19 & FLU EXPRESS report from Hong Kong states:
The latest surveillance data showed that the overall local activity of COVID-19 has continuously decreased.
New Zealand also publishes a wide range of Covid metrics and the next panel chart shows the data for cases, levels in wastewater sampling, and hospital admissions since the start of 2024.
New Zealand is also showing a rise in Covid activity as measured by wastewater monitoring and cases, although this appears to have plateaued. However, there has only been a small increase in Covid cases with a slightly greater increase in the weekly number of admissions to hospitals, albeit they are both still at relatively low levels.
Covid Levels in Europe and the USA.
Newspaper reports across Europe and in the USA have highlighted that the NB.1.8.1 variant has been detected in these regions leading to concerns that there may be a new wave of Covid activity over the summer months. This section looks at the latest data available on NB.1.8.1 levels and Covid activity in Europe and the USA
At present, the prevalence of NB.1.8,1 is still relatively low in Europe. The latest report from the European Respiratory Virus Surveillance Summary found that the most common variants from the four countries reporting data were LP.8.1 (38%) and BA.2.86 (25%) for the two weeks ending May 25. The NB.1.8.1 variant was found in just 6% of the tests sequenced during this period although it’s share is growing.
Once again, it is important to note that the number of tests sequenced is low and these estimates have a wide range of uncertainty.
The following chart shows the latest levels of Covid as measured by monitoring wastewater in a number of European countries that still publish this information.
Whilst there have been some slight increases, most notably in Austria and the Netherlands, Covid activity measured in wastewater remains low across these countries at the moment.
In the USA the latest report from the CDC Covid Tracked Summary of Variant Surveillance includes a ‘Nowcast’ estimate of the share of Covid variants for tests sequenced. The report estimates that 38% of the tests sequenced in the USA were identified as NB.1.8.1 and 37% as LP.8.1 for the two weeks ending Jun 7. This represents a significant growth in NB.1.8.1 over the previous two week period where just 15% were NB.1.8.1.
Despite this recent increase in the prevalence of the NB.1.8.1 variant, Covid activity remains low in the USA as measured by a number of key indicators. The following panel chart presents the recent trend for Covid test positivity, Covid levels in wastewater, and the impact on health as measured by the consultation rate for hospital admission rate (per 100,000) for Covid.
Data for wastewater monitoring is also available at a more granular level and the following panel chart shows the level of Covid detected in wastewater by major region.
Covid levels in wastewater are historically low across all regions with only the West region showing a slight increase in the past weeks.
In conclusion
Although the amount of data currently being published has fallen, the information available for England show that Covid levels are at relatively low levels. Recent data also indicates that Scotland, and Wales are also at low levels of Covid.
The Spring 2025 booster campaign is in progress and by the end of last week just over 55% of those aged 75 years and older had been vaccinated in England.
The WHO declared NB.1.8.1 a variant under monitoring, but assessed the present risk to public health as low. This was because although it has a slight growth advantage over other variants circulating, there was now evidence that it was a more sever illness.
Singapore and Hong Kong have recently seen significant increases in Covid activity driven by the NB.1.8.1 variant but they have peaked and are now falling fast. Covid activity measure by wastewater has increased in New Zealand but cases and hospital admissions have only just started to rise and are still at relatively low levels.
At present, NB.1.8.1 is at low levels across Europe and Covid activity is low as measured by wastewater surveillance for Covid.
The NB.1.8.1 variant is growing in the USA but there are no signs of increased levels of Covid activity at the moment.
As always, if you have any comments on this Covid Situation Report or suggestions for topics to cover, please post a message below.
Appendix 1. Test positivity rates and prevalence
Positivity rates are derived from the results of hospital laboratory tests conducted on patients exhibiting symptoms of respiratory diseases. Test positivity is the percentage of patients who test positive for Covid of the total number of patients tested. Since the individuals tested for this measure are not a representative sample of the general population it differs from prevalence, which is derived from a representative sample of the population.
Test positivity rates, while not directly estimating the number of Covid infections in the general population, can be a valuable indicator of the infection trend. The panel chart below compares the weekly test positivity rate among hospital patients with respiratory symptoms to the prevalence of Covid in the general population, as reported in the Winter Infection Survey.
The chart shows that the weekly test positivity rates for patients with symptoms of respiratory infections follows the same pattern as the prevalence for Covid reported by the Winter Infection Survey. Since the Winter Infection Survey is based on a representative sample of the general population this supports using test positivity as a useful proxy for infection trends. However it is not possible to use test positivity to estimate prevalence.
This is absolutely excellent as usual. Wonderfully comprehensive and very much appreciated.
Thank you for another detailed informative update.