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Coronavirus

Coronavirus - The Poll

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In spite of stage 2 of the roadmap going ahead as planned, it would appear that all COVID briefings have been cancelled until after Prince Philip’s funeral: https://apple.news/ATJuJIe75QDKlnvoCh-6I3Q

So it looks as though the weekly Monday briefings will be off for the time being...
 
Without wanting to get too off topic from Covid, there are no changes being made to public health messaging during the period of mourning. If briefings are necessary to convey new information, they will still take place. Statistics will still be released as normal.
 
Jonathan said:
Understandable, though I’d hope any figures will still be released as usual.
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COVID information will still be released, and vital communications will still be made regarding COVID, but there will just be no formal ministerial TV briefings until the period of mourning is over.

On a different note, I must admit I’m rather impressed by how China has suppressed the disease and seemingly lowered its spread hugely; they’ve practically eradicated it!

Let’s take a look at Worldometers for a good idea: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

According to Worldometers, China only has 279 active cases across the entire country, with only 3 people suffering from serious disease in the entire country. The country has also not registered a single coronavirus death since 17th April 2020, and case numbers have stayed in double figures for the most part, occasionally just tipping into triple figures at certain points.

I know that China took a rather aggressive stance on suppression that probably wouldn’t work in a western nation, but I’m still very impressed at how they’ve managed to go from being the COVID epicentre of the world to being practically COVID-free (in terms of community transmission)!

When looking at these stats, it’s also worth noting that China has a total population of 1,443,638,147 (so approx. 1.4 billion), so that makes their per 100,000 rates astonishingly low!
 
Matt N said:
On a different note, I must admit I’m rather impressed by how China has suppressed the disease and seemingly lowered its spread hugely; they’ve practically eradicated it!

Let’s take a look at Worldometers for a good idea: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

According to Worldometers, China only has 279 active cases across the entire country, with only 3 people suffering from serious disease in the entire country. The country has also not registered a single coronavirus death since 17th April 2020, and case numbers have stayed in double figures for the most part, occasionally just tipping into triple figures at certain points.

I know that China took a rather aggressive stance on suppression that probably wouldn’t work in a western nation, but I’m still very impressed at how they’ve managed to go from being the COVID epicentre of the world to being practically COVID-free (in terms of community transmission)!
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Really? It’s very easy when you control the media! China lied about the virus, which has been proven to have been in circulation a lot earlier they said. Medics and undertakers have also spoken out about how the deaths were much much higher than reported.

Any figures from China regarding Covid should be taken with a very large pinch of salt. A very quick search reveals some of the extent of the cover ups and lies from the country’s communist ruling government:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....oll-in-wuhan-was-50-higher-than-reported/amp/

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.28.20116012v2
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.28.20116012v2
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/abcn...t-china-earlier-researchers/story?id=71123270

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-china-52194356
 
Enjoy your new freedoms people, I have the week off work so I’m off to Devon today for a nice break and booked in the pub for 17:30.

It’s been a long winter but here’s hoping that the link has finally been broken as we start on this long road to gain our normal lives back again.
 
BigT said:
Enjoy your new freedoms people, I have the week off work so I’m off to Devon today for a nice break and booked in the pub for 17:30.

It’s been a long winter but here’s hoping that the link has finally been broken as we start on this long road to gain our normal lives back again.
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Enjoy BigT. Cracking Whether out there today. A bit chilly but could sit out for a pint.
 
I wasn't planning on going to the gym today because I knew it'd be busy, but it's only at half total capacity at the moment. By a stroke of luck, we've had our main meal at lunchtime today, so I think I might take advantage of this and go in a bit. Will try to report back later as to what it was like.
 
US health authorities are calling for a pause in the use of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, after reports of extremely rare blood clotting cases. Not really a huge surprise seeing as it is a similar vaccine to AZ. This is the one that has been talked about as a potential 'jab and go' for under 30s as it is a single dose vaccine, but if the MHRA take the same approach as they have with the AZ vaccine then that might not be possible.

6 cases in over 6.8 million doses however still means that this is an extremely rare occurrence.
 
In a dose of promising news, it has been revealed that now everyone in the top 9 priority groups has been offered a first dose, vaccine uptake has been approximately 95% among the top 9 priority groups (well, 95% of people in the top 9 groups have had their first dose, anyway, leading me to presume that vaccine uptake has been 95% in these groups due to everyone in groups 1-9 now having been offered a first dose.

With the fact that the vaccines are seemingly proving more effective than originally anticipated at reducing transmission, this is very promising for the future trajectory of the UK’s epidemic, in my opinion! Hopefully these high rates of uptake trickle down to the younger age groups too, because I think that with the vaccines we have, high uptake could well and truly stamp out the virus within the UK and allow the complete removal of restrictions, at least in the short to medium term!
 
With the South African variant being proven to evade the Pfizer vaccine in studies a few weeks ago, it would seem we now have over 600 cases of it in the U.K.

However perhaps just as worrying is the Indian variant also now in the U.K. with a double mutation which would seem to allow it to transmit easier and evade antibodies better.

[URL]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/pandoras-box-disaster-open-doctors-reveal-horror-indias-double/[/URL]

Particularly worrying in the article above is that some tests are failing to detect this new strain, and that it is affecting younger people and producing symptoms a lot more difficult to manage. Healthcare in India is basically now collapsing.

I think unless they can modify vaccines to cope with these new mutations we will be in lockdown again this winter. What’s even more concerning is that India isn’t on the travel red list!
 
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Clucking Kumbh Mela.
Should have been banned, or at least properly marshalled by the government.
Absolutely obvious two months ago.
This will be the next wave.
 
Question please folks. What is the rule/guidance on meeting people not in your bubble outside in England?

My understanding was that you still need to practice social distancing in this situation. Is that right or wrong?

It seems that not many appear to be bothering, so maybe I have misunderstood? Cheers.
 
AT86 said:
Question please folks. What is the rule/guidance on meeting people not in your bubble outside in England?

My understanding was that you still need to practice social distancing in this situation. Is that right or wrong?

It seems that not many appear to be bothering, so maybe I have misunderstood? Cheers.
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Guidance (not rules) are that those not in your household should still socially distance. Realistically though, as you're sat at the table in a pub in your groups of up to 6 you're highly unlikely to be able to distance 2 metres. That's pretty much why the rule of 6 is still a thing to minimise the numbers in groups due to this.
 
What @Craig said is bang on. The official guidance states that you should still try and socially distance from people not in your household/bubble within groups of 6, but staying the full 2m apart is not realistically possible in many situations where groups of 6 are allowed to meet.

The best way I’ve always thought about it is as a “no-touch rule”; as long as you’re not having really close physical contact (e.g. hugging) with people outside your household, then I’d say you’re still well within the guidance.

But in essence @AT86, I’d say you’re OK as long as you’re in a group of no more than 6 or consisting of no more than 2 households!
 
Some very encouraging news coming out this morning over the real world effect of vaccines. It is only on the BBC News Live Feed at the moment, so I cannot link to an article, but of roughly 74,000 people were admitted to hopsitals with the virus in recent months, only 32 of them were people who had received the vaccine (three weeks after their first dose).

Here is some more detail taken straight from the BBC:

Prof Calum Semple, of the University of Liverpool, says researchers looked "very carefully" at the hospital records of these 74,000 people and worked out how many had been admitted after vaccination started - 43,000.

They then identifed within that number just under 2,000 people that had received the vaccine, and examined how many days there were between receiving the vaccine and the onset of their symptoms.

"Most people admitted had caught their infection within a week on either side of vaccination and then there was a really sharp drop off in numbers, so that, after three weeks after being vaccinated, we could only count 32 people out of the 2,000 that had been vaccinated," he says.

Excellent stuff!
 
GaryH said:
With the South African variant being proven to evade the Pfizer vaccine in studies a few weeks ago, it would seem we now have over 600 cases of it in the U.K.

However perhaps just as worrying is the Indian variant also now in the U.K. with a double mutation which would seem to allow it to transmit easier and evade antibodies better.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-...ter-open-doctors-reveal-horror-indias-double/

Particularly worrying in the article above is that some tests are failing to detect this new strain, and that it is affecting younger people and producing symptoms a lot more difficult to manage. Healthcare in India is basically now collapsing.

I think unless they can modify vaccines to cope with these new mutations we will be in lockdown again this winter. What’s even more concerning is that India isn’t on the travel red list!
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The SA variant hasn’t been proven to fully evade the Pfizer vaccine, a small study has shown some vaccine breakthrough with the SA variant (as expected) but the study has a low sample size and doesn’t report on the impact on the infected person (we are not going to stop people getting ill from this anymore, what we need to stop if serious illness).

The Indian variant is very unclear at the moment. Neither of the mutations alone have a huge impact on severity, infectivity or vaccines, but we don’t know what the two combined will do. One expert did point out that the variant has existed in India since October so linking it to the current wave might be a bit premature as if it was going to explode in cases it should have done so prior to April as it’s had 7 months.

Another watch this space moment.
 
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