COVID-19 Coronavirus UK and World News Weekend Update 9th / 10th January 2021.
The UK added 54,940 cases today and now has reported a total of 3,072,345 positive cases of COVID-19. We completed 619,941 tests on Thursday 7th.
32,294 people were in hospital on Thursday 7th, with 3,098 using a ventilator on Friday 8th.
In the 24 hours up until 5pm yesterday, we officially reported the loss of another 563 people who have tested positive to COVID-19 within 28 days. We now very sadly have a total of 81,431 officially reported losses of life in all settings.
Rep. Of Ireland 147,613 (+6,886) cases and 2,344 (+8) losses of life.
There have now been a total of 90,423,626 reported cases worldwide. The number of people who have lost their lives worldwide to COVID-19 is 1,939,602. Already 64,646,155 people have recovered.
"The NHS in England now over 30,000 covid positive patients in its hospitals - about a third of all available beds (the proportion in intensive care is significantly higher)."
Alistair McLellan, Editor of the HSJ (Health Services Journal).
Latest charts do suggest it's possible new cases in most UK areas, especially high prevalence areas, have begun to plateau, but let's not get too excited just yet.
It is the weekend, so it can be hard to tell, but in the main the UK lockdowns do seem to be having an effect. Wales shows a sustained drop, Scotland looks like it's turning, and England tentatively is turning overall. Northern Ireland still doesn't look good.
In England, although cases are dropping or staying similar in most authorities, in just a few areas, especially where the new UK variant is beginning to take over, cases are clearly still rising - mainly the North West, South West and Midlands.
"We are expanding rapid COVID19 testing to all local authorities in England.
Councils are encouraged to focus testing on those who can't work from home in lockdown.
This will help:
- find people with COVID19 but no symptoms
- break chains of transmission- keep workers safe"
Dept. of Health & Social Care
The chair of the British Medical Association, Chaand Nagpaul, has sent a letter to members stressing that it's vital NHS staff are vaccinated as priority. He said that over 46,000 hospital staff are currently off sick with Covid-19, which just heaps more pressure on the staff who are working.
Due to the looming catastrophic situation in the UK NHS right now, Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has released a statement. It's bit long and lacking in soundbites, this is the gist:
"The advice right now is unambiguous: to drive the numbers down, we must stay home except for work, exercise and essential activities. Every unnecessary interaction you have could be the link in a chain of transmission which has a vulnerable person at the end."
Barts Hospital Trust has had to cancel urgent Cancer care, including operations which should be done within a month, because of the number of COVID patients they are treating. Kings College made the same announcement last week. Although they've attempted to keep everything going, they simply don't have the staff or ICU capacity.
There are too many kids in English schools. In some schools they have 70% of kids attending in-person, and there are hundreds of examples online of teaching staff saying they have more than double the number they had last time. My own head is amongst those asking PLEASE - ONLY take a keyworker place if you need it.
The message that's missing from the Government this lockdown is the less people in school, the safer it is for everyone. They have updated the gov dot uk website to stress ONLY send your darlings to school if you need it - keep them at home if at all possible.
Parents are still responsible for ensuring your child has a sufficient standard of education - but this is according to your own abilities. You are of course expected to be superhuman, but not invincible... Always remember the phrase "I can only ever do my best at the time, and that was my best at the time".
The countries who have lost the most people to COVID per million of their population are mostly those with a large outbreak among a very small population, those with a lack of funding for testing, Italy - who bore the brunt of the whole surprise arrival of COVID in Europe, and those who felt keeping the economy going would give the best outcome. These are the populations which will most feel the after-effects of COVID: San Marino, Belgium, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Liechtenstein, North Macedonia, Czechia, UK, Bulgaria, Peru, Montenegro, USA, Spain, Hungary, Andorra.
The Philippines are possibly regretting their decision not to ban gatherings ahead of the Feast of the Black Nazarene, a Catholic religious celebration. Manila police estimate that 400,000 people gathered in the Quiapo district on Saturday. They were mostly wearing masks and practicing social distancing, but everyone is pretty twitchy in case it'll cause a super-spreader event.
Trump of the Friday Night:
All together, "see you Donald". Yep, to the delight of hundreds of Twitter employees and thousands of the public who had lashed into them for being too lenient, Twitter took permanent action:
"After close review of recent Tweets from the realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
End of an era, and the person Twitter had to invent brand new warnings for. He had 88.7m followers, and despite the number of times I quoted him, I wasn't even one of them.
Donald has also been suspended on Facebook, Instagram and other social media, (despite reports, he isn't yet banned from PornHub), so he's attempting to launch his own platform.
When a group of like-minded individuals come together online, it's really more of a forum, not a social media platform, and it can make the members believe almost everyone else in the world shares their view.
All 3 of the vaccines which have been passed as safe for use in the UK, are considered safe for breastfeeding or pregnant women. There's still very little data available, so you should always have a chat with a medical professional.
Professor Brian "look at the stars maaannn" Cox was on the telly this morning with advice for school-at-home:
1. Make Children's lessons entertaining.
2. Pick a time of day when the child is willing to learn, don't force it.
3. Don't beat yourself up, you cannot expect yourself to be as good at teaching as a professional teacher.
This advice comes to you from the man who played keyboards on hit popular music track "Things Can Only Get Better", and then became a millionaire telly bloke and Professor of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. It sounds like excellent advice to me...
England has already vaccinated 1/3 of our over 80's, including The Queen and Phil, and Boris Johnson's Father. 7 new mass vaccination centres should be open before next weekend.
Some numbers. Every single number refers to a person very much like you:
Countries / Cases / Losses of life (in larger countries some states /provinces have yet to report today):
USA 22,761,269 (+61,128) 382,105 (+622)
India 10,466,545 (+15,199) 151,184 (+136)
Brazil 8,079,450 (+3,452) 202,716 (+59)
Russia 3,401,954 (+22,851) 61,837 (+456)
UK 3,072,349 (+54,940) 81,431 (+563)
France 2,783,256 (+15,944) 67,750 (+151)
Turkey 2,326,256 (+9,138) 22,807 (+176)
Italy 2,276,491 (+18,627) 78,755 (+361)
Spain 2,050,360 not yet reported today 51,874
Germany 1,920,741 (+5,582) 41,233 (+172)
Poland 1,385,522 (+9,410) 31,189 (+177)
Iran 1,286,406 (+5,968) 56,171 (+71)
Ukraine 1,115,026 (+5,011) 19,767 (+99)
Netherlands 872,847 (+6,612) 12,361 (+54)
Czechia 831,165 (+8,406) 13,115 (+69)
Indonesia 828,026 (+9,640) 24,129 (+182)
Romania 671,284 (+3,082) 16,654 (+62)
Belgium 662,694 (+1,991) 20,038 (+46)
Canada 659,006 (+6,533) 16,933 (+100)
.
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Sources:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
https://twitter.com/DHSCgovuk/status/1348218778958532609?s=19
https://twitter.com/Pornhub?s=09
https://m-huffingtonpost-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/amp/entry/schools-report-full-classrooms-covid-lockdown_uk_5ff83df7c5b656719884b18b/
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/950219/Education_Act_1996_-_school_attendance_offence_disapplication_notice_January_2021.pdf
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1347684877634838528?s=19
https://twitter.com/irenegarth1946/status/1348226189236854784?s=19
https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1348306235876143109
https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1348304049150586880
https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1348304017814904832/photo/1
There's a fantastic vaccine info round up on Twitter (cheers Cathy)
https://twitter.com/Boghuma/status/1344338009785851907?s=19
https://twitter.com/MHRAgovuk/status/1348253371145330688?s=09
https://twitter.com/HSJEditor/status/1348332291756535809
https://twitter.com/i/events/1347934729975185410
https://twitter.com/HSJEditor/status/1348334438623674372
https://twitter.com/MattHancock/status/1348235558783512576
https://twitter.com/EdLlewellynFCDO/status/1348251228229099523
They are certainly getting these vaccines through x
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