As of 5pm yesterday, of those hospitalised in the UK, we have lost another 684 people to COVID-19. We now sadly have a total of 3,605 losses of life.
Total cases are: England 31,797, Scotland 3,001, Wales 2,466 and Northern Ireland 904. Already (many more than) 135 of the UK's positive testing cases have recovered.
Rep. Of Ireland have 4,273 cases and 120 losses of life.
There have now been 1,074,290 reported cases worldwide. The number of people who have lost their lives worldwide to COVID-19 is now 56,989. Already 226,062 people have recovered.
Boris is still ill with a temperature (he doesn't look well), so it was over to Matt Hancock to lead the briefing.
In the last 24 hours, 2 nurses and 2 health care assistants have lost their lives to COVID-19.
We currently have over 2,000 empty critical care beds and haven't yet had to use the NHS Nightingale Hospitals (I am genuinely impressed with this, it's a really good thing. I expected we would need them this week).
It looks like a gorgeous weekend, but we absolutely cannot afford to relax the social distancing right now, it WILL cost lives. We are instructed to STAY HOME.
Ruth May, Chief Nursing Officer for England talked about the 'team' who have come together to all work for the NHS (thank you to all of you). She's not confident at speeches, but she's actually very sincere, genuinely thankful and, like most of us, a bit scared.
Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, Deputy Chief Medical Officer told us that we are staying home, and thanked us for that, and stressed we have to keep staying home.
We are following Italy and France's trajectories, almost on a par with the USA.
We expect to reach the peak of our epidemic around 14th April, we have a way to go yet.
We have looked into Anosmia (loss of sense of smell and taste) as a symptom, but have decided that alone it doesn't offer diagnosis, so isn't helpful. Much more helpfully Matt Hancock commented that he'd had this symptom and his senses have now returned.
We have ordered 17.5m antibody tests (Did I have it? tests, suitable from 4 weeks after you are ill) but they still haven't yet been through final UK quality controls.
There were questions about masks, and the answers were that 'they are not recommended for the general public'. If you are in a position to stay home and practise physical distancing when you are out, it offers you no real advantage.
PPE is being delivered to social care settings, and the army will be involved in the logistics of that.
More temporary hospital sites have been announced, Bristol (1000 beds) and Harrogate (500 beds).
Chris Whitty, the UK's Chief Medical Officer, has written to all clinical colleagues to ask them to enrol as many patients as possible into the 3 different surveys the UK are doing to try and find the most effective treatments for COVID-19 from existing treatments. PRINCIPAL looks at higher risk patients, RECOVERY is an in-hospital trial and REMAP-CAP is a study of critically ill patients.
London NHS Nightingale is now operational and was officially opened by the now mostly recovered Charles Mountbatten-Windsor. It was done via video link from his Scottish residence. Disappointingly no ribbon to cut and he didn't chuck a bottle of Champers at the wall. Instead a plaque was unveiled in London on his behalf.
Charles' Mum has a new video out on Sunday. She's recorded it especially:
"On Sunday 5th April at 8pm (BST) Her Majesty The Queen will address the UK and the Commonwealth in a televised broadcast. As well as on television and radio, The Queen’s address will be shown on The Royal Family’s social media channels."
From Monday Heathrow will only operate one runway.
The BBC are proving they're well worth the license fee. They have scheduled a full 14 weeks of educational programmes and lessons for children of all ages (and abilities). It'll start April 20th. Lots of people are collaborating with the project, including Puffin Books.
The Ministry of Defence has called up 3,000 military reservists to provide medical and logistical (transport) support to the NHS.
New York City and Los Angeles have advised people to cover their faces (nose and mouth) when they are out.
Elon Musk spent a while assuming COVID-19 was a false alarm and has now seen the light in a big way. He's frantically purchasing BPAP machines and offering them free of charge delivered, to any country who needs them in use right now. They aren't ventilators, but can still save the lives of a lot of COVID-19 patients.
BPAP are a 2-setting type of CPAP machine (used to keep people with sleep apnoea breathing at night).
The USA in the last 24 hours reported the highest daily tally of losses of life 1,169 souls lost.
New York State alone at 4.30pm GMT today had 102,863 cases, 14,810 people in hospital, 3,731 in ICU and 8,886 discharged. 2,935 people succumbed. Population 18.8m people, around half live in New York City.
This virus will surely reach even the furthest corners of the Earth. The first case of COVID-19 in indigenous people has been reported in Brazil. A 20 year old woman from the Kokama Tribe in the Amazon rainforest has tested positive.
Northern Ireland will temporarily release 100 prisoners. Prisons have been very badly affected by COVID-19 whenever it has found it's way into the population.
Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana stadium is being turned into 1 of 7 field hospitals to treat coronavirus patients. President Bolsonaro still believes everyone is over-reacting. He's previously stated that only over 60's are at risk, but not him, because he is "an athlete". 21 of the country's state governors are ignoring him.
The WHO (World Health Organisation) press conference today had a guest from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the discussion was about those countries which don't have the ability to fight COVID-19 by themselves.
"For some countries, debt relief is essential to enable them to take care of their people & avoid economic collapse. This is an area of cooperation between WHO, the IMF and the World Bank" Dr Tedros
They said there are 3 main areas for countries to focus on:
1. Ensure core public health measures are fully funded, including case-finding, testing, contact tracing, collecting data, and communication and information campaigns.
2. Strengthen the foundations of health systems. That means health workers must be paid their salaries, and health facilities need a reliable supply of funding to purchase essential medical supplies.
3. Remove financial barriers to care. If people delay or forego care because they can’t afford it, they not only harm themselves, they make the COVID19 pandemic harder to control and put society at risk.
On Saturday China will hold a National Day Of Mourning for the victims of COVID-19, with 3 minutes silence at 10am (Eastern Standard Time).
Luxury Cruise News:
After 12 days stranded at sea, The Zaandam has finally docked in Fort Lauderdale. Hundreds of people on board are ill and 4 have died. 14 people were so ill they were rushed immediately to hospital. They had been turned away from 11 countries after their last stop in South America on 14th March.
Sister ship The Rotterdam Cruise Ship has also docked, and also has several ill passengers on board.
The Coral Princess is expected to arrive within days. They also have sick passengers on board and were refused landing in Brazil and other South American countries.
This has to be the last, surely? I've been saying that for a month? Nope. According to Carnival Cruise lines, they have 6000 passengers still at sea.
The US Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, which is docked in Guam, has a less luxury outbreak of COVID-19 and the commander wrote a strong letter asking for more help. It was leaked to the press and he's been 'removed from his post'. Over 100 of the US Navy crew are ill and with a government which values public image over almost anything, this man has likely given up his career in a desperate attempt for their safety. He's a hero.
Why might we need to lock down for so long?
It's easy for COVID-19 to still be active after a month, even behaving yourself on lockdown in a family of 3.
Dad catches it on 1st when shopping
Dad has cold symptoms and infects our kid on 5th
Our kid has no symptoms and infects Mum on 14th
Mum becomes ill on 19th
Mum becomes ill enough to need hospital on 28th
(Usually it's around day 2-13 you'll pass it on to someone else, average day 5 you become ill, day 10-12 you become better, day 13/14 you become very ill if you are going to).
If our kid nipped out to have a sneaky kickabout on the park on 11th, then we have a whole new problem...
Researchers in Denmark are starting to test a drug normally used for pancreatic disorders in covid19 patients. Camostat mesylate can go straight to human trials because it's already licensed in Japan.
There's a hoax about coronavirus being somehow linked to 5G. Some people actually seem to believe it's true and are ringing the NHS to check. Omigosh. Please no. Just for a second think about how ridiculously complicated that would be, compared to how easy it is for everyone to just catch an infectious disease...
Some folk in the UK are being utterly horrible to pharmacists, with record numbers of verbal and physical assaults, and even at least one death threat. Why? These people are out there every day working the hardest they've ever worked, to ensure you get your medicines. They see as many people with COVID-19 as your average doctor and the physical distancing rules are there to protect everyone. Sure it takes a bit longer, and everyone's a bit scared, but we really need to look after the people we rely on to look after us.
Some numbers. Every single number represents a person very much like you:
USA 265,506 (+20,629) 6,786 (+716)
Italy 119,827 (+4,585) 14,681 (+766)
Spain 117,710 (+5,645) 10,935 (+587)
Germany 89,838 (+5,044) 1,230 (+123)
China 81,620 (+31) 3,322 (+4)
France 59,105 (Not yet reported) 5,387
Iran 53,183 (+2,715) 3,294 (+134)
UK 38,168 (+4,450) 3,605 (+684)
Turkey 20,921 (+2,786) 425 (+69)
Switzerland 19,606 (+779) 591 (+55)
Belgium 16,770 (+1,422) 1,143 (+132)
Netherlands 15,723 (+1,026) 1,487 (+148)
Indonesia 1,986 (+196) 181 (+11)
Thailand 1,978 (+103) 19 (+4)
Finland 1,615 (+97) 20 (+1)
Greece 1,613 (+69) 59 (+6)
Mexico 1,510 (+132) 50 (+13)
Qatar 1,075 (+126) 3
Estonia 961 (+103) 12 (+1)
Trinidad and Tobago 97 (+3) 6 (+1)
Gibraltar 95 (+7)
Paraguay 92 (+15) 3
https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1246061575242428416
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/02/brazil-confirms-first-indigenous-case-of-coronavirus-in-amazon
https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/business/tesla-plans-to-supply-fda-approved-ventilators-free-of-cost-elon-musk/articleshow/74925321.cms
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/04/01/1585782924000/Elon-Musk-promised-ventilators--These-are-BPAP-machines-/
https://twitter.com/kakape/status/1245765966690205698
https://twitter.com/QuickTake/status/1245907328077086720
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/prince-charles-to-open-nhs-nightingale-to-treat-covid-19-patients
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/31/coronavirus-infections-aircraft-carrier-captain-pleads-for-help.html?__twitter_impression=true
https://twitter.com/CMO_England/status/1246077006757924864
I just don’t get why people are being horrible. They should be grateful. I really hope people listen & stay indoors. Xx
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