In February, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the public would have to get used to “living with COVID”, and announced the phasing out of all COVID-related restrictions over the following months. For many people, life since then has begun to return to something resembling normal.
Of course, there are some notable differences to pre-pandemic times, with a huge increase in working from home, and worryingly, many people still suffering from long COVID. But in most respects, you could be forgiven for thinking the pandemic was over.
Yet, over the past few weeks, there have been indications that a new wave of COVID is coming. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) infection survey suggests that around 1.7 million people in the UK had COVID in the week ending June 18 – an increase of over 80% in the previous three weeks. Given the infection survey data is published with a delay of at least one week, these figures almost certainly underestimate the number of cases today.
COVID cases across the UK are rising
One significant change in the last few months has been the end of free mass testing, which stopped in April. While this was inevitable at some stage because of the significant costs involved, it has taken away one of the UK’s key early warning systems.
In the past, an increase in positive tests in the community has been among the first signs that a new wave was coming. Without this, we may not realise the seriousness of a new variant until it’s already well established and people start turning up in hospitals in increasing numbers.
BA.4 and BA.5
Two new omicron variants, BA.4 and BA.5, are making up most of the infections in the current wave. Both of them are more transmissible than BA.2, the previously dominant variant. The evidence is still unclear on whether these variants are more or less severe than earlier forms of omicron, but the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has classified them as “variants of concern”.
The latest hospital data shows that the number of new COVID patients (a combination of new admissions and people who catch COVID in hospital) in England is rising. In the most vulnerable age groups (65 and over) these figures are at almost two-thirds of the January peak seen during the initial omicron wave.
Rate of new COVID hospital admissions in England by age
The situation is most acute in the north-west of England, where there are currently around 200 new COVID admissions every day. The north-west was also one of the worst affected parts of the country in terms of hospital admissions during the BA.1 and BA.2 waves.
The key question at this stage is how long this increase will carry on for. Without the early warning system of mass testing, it’s hard to know. Ultimately, this wave will start to subside when the growth advantage of the new variants comes up against the wall of immunity put up by vaccinations and previous infections.
Although we’ve done an excellent job of getting initial doses of COVID vaccines in arms in this country, a combination of immunity waning over time and the fact that newer variants are generally better at overcoming this immunity means that this wall is not as strong as it once was.
There are, however, a few reasons to be cautiously optimistic. South Africa, which has often been a bellwether for new variants, and where BA.4 and BA.5 were first identified, saw a much smaller wave as a result of these variants, with relatively few hospitalisations and deaths compared with previous waves. Portugal was one of the first European countries to see a BA.4/5 wave and, while it did see a significant increase in hospital admissions, case numbers now appear to have begun to fall without reaching the same severity as previous waves.
Some cause for concern
Even if the BA.4/5 wave isn’t as big as earlier waves, there are two major concerns. The first is the pressure already placed on the NHS, which has been stretched to the limit by the events of the last two years. Ambulance waiting times are at record levels, as are A&E waiting times, with over one-quarter of patients waiting more than four hours to be seen. This comes alongside a huge backlog of operations and other types of medical care that were delayed during the pandemic. Even a modest BA.4/5 wave is only going to add to these pressures.
The second issue is the growing number of people with long COVID. As many as 1.4 million people in the UK report symptoms that affect their day-to-day lives. And these figures are from May, before infections started rising again.
So what can we do? If you were taking precautions earlier in the year that you’ve since dropped, it would be wise to think about picking these up again. These include things like wearing a mask in crowded places, not meeting people if you have any symptoms, and testing if possible if you’re feeling unwell or are going to spend time with someone who is vulnerable. The UKHSA also suggest meeting other people outdoors or in well-ventilated places.
To help reinforce our protection against these new (and future) variants, there might be merit to bringing the autumn booster campaign, which will offer a fourth dose to people over 65 and other more vulnerable groups, forward. It may also be worthwhile to consider offering fourth doses to younger age groups soon, and additional boosters to the most vulnerable groups.
The tide of the pandemic is going out. But as with any receding tide, there will always be the odd bigger wave that can catch you out if you’re not careful. The end of mass testing and threats to the future of the invaluable ONS COVID infection survey make it more likely that these waves will catch us unprepared. The parlous state of the NHS and the threat of long COVID mean we shouldn’t be complacent to the potential threat of this, or subsequent waves, even as the tide continues to go out.
Colin Angus does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
COVID-19 lockdowns linked to less accurate recollection of event timing
Participants in a survey study made a relatively high number of errors when asked to recollect the timing of major events that took place in 2021, providing…
Participants in a survey study made a relatively high number of errors when asked to recollect the timing of major events that took place in 2021, providing new insights into how COVID-19 lockdowns impacted perception of time. Daria Pawlak and Arash Sahraie of the University of Aberdeen, UK, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 31, 2023.
Participants in a survey study made a relatively high number of errors when asked to recollect the timing of major events that took place in 2021, providing new insights into how COVID-19 lockdowns impacted perception of time. Daria Pawlak and Arash Sahraie of the University of Aberdeen, UK, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 31, 2023.
Remembering when past events occurred becomes more difficult as more time passes. In addition, people’s activities and emotions can influence their perception of the passage of time. The social isolation resulting from COVID-19 lockdowns significantly impacted people’s activities and emotions, and prior research has shown that the pandemic triggered distortions in people’s perception of time.
Inspired by that earlier research and clinical reports that patients have become less able to report accurate timelines of their medical conditions, Pawlak and Sahraie set out to deepen understanding of the pandemic’s impact on time perception.
In May 2022, the researchers conducted an online survey in which they asked 277 participants to give the year in which several notable recent events occurred, such as when Brexit was finalized or when Meghan Markle joined the British royal family. Participants also completed standard evaluations for factors related to mental health, including levels of boredom, depression, and resilience.
As expected, participants’ recollection of events that occurred further in the past was less accurate. However, their perception of the timing of events that occurred in 2021—one year prior to the survey—was just an inaccurate as for events that occurred three to four years earlier. In other words, many participants had difficulty recalling the timing of events coinciding with COVID-19 lockdowns.
Additionally, participants who made more errors in event timing were also more likely to show greater levels of depression, anxiety, and physical mental demands during the pandemic, but had less resilience. Boredom was not significantly associated with timeline accuracy.
These findings are similar to those previously reported for prison inmates. The authors suggest that accurate recollection of event timing requires “anchoring” life events, such as birthday celebrations and vacations, which were lacking during COVID-19 lockdowns.
The authors add: “Our paper reports on altered timescapes during the pandemic. In a landscape, if features are not clearly discernible, it is harder to place objects/yourself in relation to other features. Restrictions imposed during the pandemic have impoverished our timescape, affecting the perception of event timelines. We can recall that events happened, we just don’t remember when.
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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278250
Citation: Pawlak DA, Sahraie A (2023) Lost time: Perception of events timeline affected by the COVID pandemic. PLoS ONE 18(5): e0278250. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278250
Author Countries: UK
Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.
Journal
PLoS ONE
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0278250
Method of Research
Survey
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Lost time: Perception of events timeline affected by the COVID pandemic
Article Publication Date
31-May-2023
COI Statement
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Hyro secures $20M for its AI-powered, healthcare-focused conversational platform
Israel Krush and Rom Cohen first met in an AI course at Cornell Tech, where they bonded over a shared desire to apply AI voice technologies to the healthcare…
Israel Krush and Rom Cohen first met in an AI course at Cornell Tech, where they bonded over a shared desire to apply AI voice technologies to the healthcare sector. Specifically, they sought to automate the routine messages and calls that often lead to administrative burnout, like calls about scheduling, prescription refills and searching through physician directories.
Several years after graduating, Krush and Cohen productized their ideas with Hyro, which uses AI to facilitate text and voice conversations across the web, call centers and apps between healthcare organizations and their clients. Hyro today announced that it raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Liberty Mutual, Macquarie Capital and Black Opal, bringing the startup’s total raised to $35 million.
Krush says that the new cash will be put toward expanding Hyro’s go-to-market teams and R&D.
“When we searched for a domain that would benefit from transforming these technologies most, we discovered and validated that healthcare, with staffing shortages and antiquated processes, had the greatest need and pain points, and have continued to focus on this particular vertical,” Krush told TechCrunch in an email interview.
To Krush’s point, the healthcare industry faces a major staffing shortfall, exacerbated by the logistical complications that arose during the pandemic. In a recent interview with Keona Health, Halee Fischer-Wright, CEO of Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), said that MGMA’s heard that 88% of medical practices have had difficulties recruiting front-of-office staff over the last year. By another estimates, the healthcare field has lost 20% of its workforce.
Hyro doesn’t attempt to replace staffers. But it does inject automation into the equation. The platform is essentially a drop-in replacement for traditional IVR systems, handling calls and texts automatically using conversational AI.
Hyro can answer common questions and handle tasks like booking or rescheduling an appointment, providing engagement and conversion metrics on the backend as it does so.
Plenty of platforms do — or at least claim to. See RedRoute, a voice-based conversational AI startup that delivers an “Alexa-like” customer service experience over the phone. Elsewhere, there’s Omilia, which provides a conversational solution that works on all platforms (e.g. phone, web chat, social networks, SMS and more) and integrates with existing customer support systems.
But Krush claims that Hyro is differentiated. For one, he says, it offers an AI-powered search feature that scrapes up-to-date information from a customer’s website — ostensibly preventing wrong answers to questions (a notorious problem with text-generating AI). Hyro also boasts “smart routing,” which enables it to “intelligently” decide whether to complete a task automatically, send a link to self-serve via SMS or route a request to the right department.
A bot created using Hyro’s development tools. Image Credits: Hyro
“Our AI assistants have been used by tens of millions of patients, automating conversations on various channels,” Krush said. “Hyro creates a feedback loop by identifying missing knowledge gaps, basically mimicking the operations of a call center agent. It also shows within a conversation exactly how the AI assistant deduced the correct response to a patient or customer query, meaning that if incorrect answers were given, an enterprise can understand exactly which piece of content or dataset is labeled incorrectly and fix accordingly.”
Of course, no technology’s perfect, and Hyro’s likely isn’t an exception to the rule. But the startup’s sales pitch was enough to win over dozens of healthcare networks, providers and hospitals as clients, including Weill Cornell Medicine. Annual recurring revenue has doubled since Hyro went to market in 2019, Krush claims.
Hyro’s future plans entail expanding to industries adjacent to healthcare, including real estate and the public sector, as well as rounding out the platform with more customization options, business optimization recommendations and “variety” in the AI skills that Hyro supports.
“The pandemic expedited digital transformation for healthcare and made the problems we’re solving very clear and obvious (e.g. the spike in calls surrounding information, access to testing, etc.),” Krush said. “We were one of the first to offer a COVID-19 virtual assistant that deployed in under 48 hours based on trusted information from the health system and trusted resources such as the CDC and World Health Organization …. Hyro is well funded, with good growth and momentum, and we’ve always managed a responsible budget, so we’re actually looking to expand and gather more market share while competitors are slowing down.”
The UK labour market has finally started to see a fall in vacancies following a post-COVID spike in open positions. But there are still more than a million job vacancies, which are “damaging the economy by preventing firms from fulfilling order books and taking on new work”, according to the British Chambers of Commerce.
A recent survey by this business lobby group found four-fifths of firms can’t recruit the people they need. Companies often look outside for external candidates to fill senior roles, but this overlooks current employees who may have the potential to move up within an organisation – even if they do not know it yet.
Overlooking employees often happens when management plays it safe, rather than risking giving “one of their own” an important new assignment. The resulting untapped employee potential can leave people feeling underused and frustrated. You need to be given opportunities to stretch, learn and develop to fulfil your potential at work.
This article is part of Quarter Life, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.You may be interested in:
Human resource managers use potential – and in particular, leadership potential – to identify the employees that could be their organisation’s future leaders. In the business world (and often in academic research too), the term “high potential” typically means you are able to develop further and faster than others in a similar situation.
Someone with leadership potential has the capacity to be an effective leader in the future, but may need support to develop the right skills and experience to succeed. So, how can you work out your own leadership potential? Research highlights three main traits you need:
1. Growth: learning and motivation
Many studies identify the ability to learn as key to predicting future leadership effectiveness. This incorporates keenness to learn, the ability to extract as many lessons as possible from different experiences, and to adapt by applying these to enhance your future performance.
This explains why some people learn more from their experiences (and develop faster) than others. There is also a motivational component that includes drive and perseverance to achieve results, and the ambition to lead.
2. Foundational: cognitive and personality characteristics
Research shows that people who are more emotionally balanced, sociable, ambitious, conscientious and curious are more likely to become leaders.
Also, because it’s important to be able to make decisions effectively in any senior role, cognitive capabilities are key. These typically include strong judgment skills in complex and ambiguous situations, and being able to collect and evaluate information from diverse sources to reach solid decisions.
3. Career: qualities specific to the future role
Some models of potential also include “career dimensions”, which are specific skills relevant to a future role. For leadership potential, these might include qualities such as strategic thinking or collaboration.
New technology and workplace trends are among the factors that are changing how we work. This means the demands of future roles – and the career-specific qualities required to excel in them – may be quite different to those of your current job. In fact, research shows that more than 70% of today’s top performers still lack the key qualities that will help them to be successful in their future roles.
How can you develop these qualities?
As rapid change renders knowledge and skills out of date at an astonishing rate, the ability to learn is increasingly crucial to future leaders. Rather than “having all the answers”, you need to be able to find or figure the answers out. This means that leaders need the humility to know they don’t know it all, and the interpersonal skills to listen openly and learn from a diverse network of people.
Having asked, listened and sought varied insights, leaders must then apply strong judgment and problem-solving skills to decide on the best way forward – even if there is no obvious path. This draws upon cognitive ability, but it also involves skills that can be learnt.
Unfortunately, organisations often rely upon current (or past) performance as a barometer of potential, which is far from ideal – not just because only a small proportion of current high performers also have high potential, but because people with strong potential may not currently be performing at their best. Perhaps they aren’t in the right role, or aren’t being sufficiently stretched or supported.
Either way, your employer shouldn’t conflate your current performance with your potential. This could also perpetuate the lack of diversity that persists at leadership level in many firms. Past performance is limited by opportunity. Some people, due to biases and stereotypes, may not have been offered the chance to show what they are capable of yet.
To avoid these problems, organisations need to assess their employees objectively to find those with leadership potential. This could include doing psychometric tests of their personality and cognitive and learning abilities. Simulations of typical tasks or problems could also replicate the likely cognitive demands of future leadership roles, helping to identify people who can best cope and learn from the experience.
However, if you’re good at learning from experiences and applying this to improve how you do things, and are motivated to progress and grow, you have a good chance of developing the career dimension qualities needed to be a future leader – and to do this faster than your peers.
But organisations must help by finding ways to stretch employees, while also building the scaffolding to support their learning and development. They should balance challenge with support through coaching, to help employees learn as much as they can from their experiences. If you want to be a future leader, you can then use these experiences to enhance your job performance and reach your full potential.
Zara Whysall also works for Kiddy & Partners, part of Gateley Plc.
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