The UK added 3,009 cases today and now has reported a total of 25,150 positive cases of COVID-19. We had in total tested 143,186 people as of 9am this morning.
As of 5pm yesterday, of those hospitalised in the UK, we have lost another 381 people to COVID-19. We now sadly have a total of 1,789 losses of life.
Total cases are: England 21,008, Scotland 1,993, Wales 1,563 and Northern Ireland 586. Already 135 of the UK's positive testing cases have recovered.
Rep. Of Ireland have 2,910 cases and 54 losses of life (not yet reported).
There have now been 837,022 reported cases worldwide. The number of people who have lost their lives worldwide to COVID-19 is now 41,245. Already 176,040 people have recovered.
Michael Gove drew short straw again today for the daily briefing, with Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jenny Harries and Professor Stephen Powis, Medical Director of NHS England.
In London 3,915 COVID-19 patients are in hospital, in the Midlands it's 1,918. Gove talked about increasing testing and says we are negotiating the necessary components to increase both the COVID-19 'have you got it' testing, and the 'did you have it' testing when that starts.
We are buying more ventilators from abroad, as well as producing ventilators within the UK in an arrangement with companies including Ford, Airbus, Dyson, Rolls Royce and Mercedes F1.
A team from UCL will develop thousands of CPAP machines (I mentioned these yesterday) as a quick and easy method of ventilating COVID-19 patients.
The Government are delivering food and medicines to 1.5m of our most vulnerable people, and volunteers will also work with other people, including those who just need a friendly voice.
We've moved all of our helicopters around so that we can support remote members of the public and get them to hospital if they need it.
Steven Parries explained how the NHS is coping - so far it's okay.
NHS Nightingale will be ready to take patients this week.
He explained around 1/3 of the UK's hospital admissions are in London, which is the worst affected area. When asked about the large number of deaths today, he explained that it will vary and it's important to look at the pattern over a few days, rather than just one or two figures.
Jenny Harries talked about the drive-through Boots testing clinics for NHS workers, and says they are being expanded. She also talked about the possibility of postal tests to save the time of NHS employees.
There were actually interesting press questions - London has 1400 NHS ICU beds and 1000 people in Intensive Care, so we don't yet have to overflow into the NHS Nightingale Hospital. At one point Jenny Harries said 'have you got it' and 'did you have it' tests, which was a bit weird for me because I'd just typed that.
The UK have only been including people who succumbed in hospital in their figures. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have released a report today which shows up until 20th March (11 days ago), an additional 40 people died from COVID-19 elsewhere.
Nicola Sturgeon has been taking hints from President Akufo-Addo of Rwanda. She reminded Douglas Ross MP today:
"We can rebuild the economy, we can't bring people back to life".
New Zealand has extended it's state of emergency.
The UAE have postponed Expo2020 for a year and automatically extended residence visas for 3 months.
It's hard for us to appreciate that this movie plot we're living in isn't just a high resolution sequel, it can be harder for world leaders to accept their country is actually involved. There are plenty who didn't or aren't taking COVID-19 seriously:
Iran - refused to act quickly, saying closing to religious visitors was against human rights. It was only when surrounding countries started taking measures against Iranian visitors and closing their own religious buildings that Iran acted.
USA - Donald Trump called it a hoax up until 3 weeks ago, and still at times clearly believes it will just kill a few weaker people and ruin the economy. State Governors are taking matters into their own hands.
Brazil - President Bolsonaro - the 27 Brazilian states are semi-autonomous and most have taken measures, but Bolsonaro believes they're lunatics and taking no measures will protect the economy and barely make a difference.
Sweden - seem to be completely oblivious to any dangers and feel enforced restrictions aren't necessary, as their population are adults and can make their own decisions. Other countries and even the WHO have been shouting 'wake up' at them for weeks. The population are beginning to stir.
Belarus - President Lukashenko believes it's better to die standing. He feels it's nothing they can't deal with and will just kill a few weaker people. He advises 50ml of vodka a day to stave it off (no!!!). Some of the population are however choosing to stay home.
We can be relatively certain the whole population mortality rate for COVID-19 is somewhere between 0.02% and 4%, but we can't really be more accurate than that. Because so many people need oxygen for a period of time, as soon as health services are overwhelmed or COVID-19 meets a vulnerable population, those numbers go right up. We also don't know if some of the people who have serious pneumonia from COVID-19 might end up with long term lung damage. These are just two reasons any complacency might turn out to be a genuinely bad idea.
Some UK authorities are giving parents shopping vouchers in lieu of free school meals. That's why you need to speak to your school asap if you qualify.
The USA has now tested more than 1 million people for COVID-19.
Lost Their Fight
London-based reggae artist UK Principal, aka Douglas Sparks
Sociologist and Author, William Helmreich
61 doctors have already died from COVID-19 in Italy. More than 41 doctors have died in Iran. 2 doctors have already lost their lives in the UK. Frontline medical staff are massively at risk themselves. They're genuine heroes.
China will include asymptomatic cases in their numbers from April 1st. This is an ongoing situation and we know from previously released data that around 30% of their positive cases have no symptoms, so haven't been counted. It would be my guess that now they aren't top of the graph, they don't feel high numbers stand out so much....
Italy have held one minute's silence for the victims of COVID-19.
We have wild boar in Milan, dolphins in Venice and now - goats in Llandudno. Wildlife is really enjoying the lack of humans, and our vehicles. Have you heard the birds?
The International Exhibition Centre in Tehran has been turned into a temporary 2000-bed hospital.
NHS doctors, nurses and paramedics with UK work visas due to expire before October 1 will have them automatically extended for a year.
South Korea has delayed re-opening schools and pupils will return via online learning.
Italy looks likely to announce another 2 weeks of lockdown. Numbers are slowing, but not decisively dropping. Almost 60% of the people who have so far lost their lives were from Lombardy.
Zimbabwe is beginning a 3 week lockdown.
Scientists still haven't located patient zero in China, and probably now never will. We know bats host many coronavirus and studies of the RNA (like DNA a building block) still suggest that a bat was the original source of COVID-19, but evidence is increasing that it passed on to a Pangolin and then to humans.
An unusual side effect of COVID-19 is great news for the Pangolin (scaly anteater). It is endangered and was the most trafficked animal in the world. Now no-one wants to eat it, it's use in a Chinese medicine has been massively reduced and sales of wild pangolin are banned in China. Maybe we just seriously underestimated animal intelligence and the pangolin orchestrated this whole thing.
New York's Empire State Building has been lit up in flashing red and white in support of all of the frontline medical and emergency workers.
If you panic bought then remember you can freeze dairy products including milk and cheese. You can freeze bread products. Dry bread can be waved under a running tap and put into the oven for 3 or 4 minutes to refresh it (eat immediately), or crumbled for stuffing, burger mixes or fruit crumble. Fruit can be chopped up and frozen for smoothies and pies. Vegetables can be chopped and frozen, then thrown straight into stir fries, curries, chilli and pie. Anything you can't use can be left on doorsteps or donated to your local food bank. Don't waste it.
If you look at Italy's new cases you can clearly see they are dropping, but unfortunately because COVID-19 causes pneumonia, the numbers of souls lost is still incredibly high. It will be another few days before we can expect it to really drop, but hopefully only a few more days. It will be weeks before every patient has an outcome.
Some people, they just look like numbers, but they're people.
USA 176,518 (+12,730) 3,431 (+290)
Italy 105,792 (+4,053) 12,428 (+837)
Spain 94,417 (+6,461) 8,269 (+553) Usually report twice
China 81,518 (+79) 3,305 (+5)
Germany 68,180 (+1,295) 682 (+37)
Iran44,605 (+3,110) 2,898 (+141)
France 52,128 (+7,578) 3,523 (+499)
UK 25,150 (+3,009) 1,789 (+381)
Switzerland 16,186 (+264) 395 (+36)
Belgium 12,775 (+876) 705 (+192)
Netherlands 12,595 (+845) 1,039 (+175)
Turkey 13,531 (+2,704) 214 (+46)
Austria 10,038 (+420) 128 (+20)
S. Korea 9,786 (+125) 162 (+4)
Canada 7,474 (+26) 92 (+3)
Portugal 7,443 (+1,035) 160 (+20)
Israel 4,831 (+136) 17 (+1)
https://twitter.com/kakape/status/1244935225387503616
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/italy-expected-to-maintain-lockdown-as-it-awaits-steady-covid-19-12590860
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jproteome.0c00129
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-coronavirus-death-toll-uk-21784524
http://virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious-origin-of-ncov2019/384
https://coronavirusexplained.ukri.org/en
https://twitter.com/AndrewStuart/status/1243329253288169473?s=19
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/iran-confronts-coronavirus-amid-battle-between-science-and-conspiracy-theories
https://twitter.com/Ash_Stewart_/status/1244829266010914816
https://twitter.com/Nadine_Writes/status/1244967723899248646
It really is scary how big these figures are getting. Lots of love to you all xx
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