COVID-19 Coronavirus UK and World News Update 11th June 2021.

COVID-19 Coronavirus UK and World News Update 11th June 2021.

The UK added 8,125 cases today and now has reported a total of 4,550,944 positive cases of COVID-19. We completed 945,090 tests yesterday.

The counter says 41,088,485 people (78% of all UK adults) had been given at least one dose of a vaccine in the UK by midnight last night. 29,165,140 people (55.4%) had received 2 doses and are fully vaccinated.

1,058 people were in hospital with COVID on Wednesday 11th, with 158 people using a ventilator yesterday, 10th June.

In the 24 hours up until 5pm yesterday, we officially reported the loss of another 17 people who have tested positive to COVID-19 within 28 days, making a total of 127,884 official losses of life in all settings.

Rep. Of Ireland 265,754 cases and 4,941 losses of life. (Not yet reported today.)

There have now been a total of 175,817,936 reported cases worldwide. The number of people who have lost their lives worldwide to COVID-19 is 3,795,075. Already 159,395,196 people have recovered.

"The United States will purchase a half a billion doses of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to donate to nearly 100 nations that are in dire need in the fight against this pandemic."
US President Joe Biden
It's the first day of the G7 and jointly 7 of the world's richest nations have committed to globally distributing one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses by the end of 2022. The initial 5 million UK doses will ship in the coming weeks. Joe has said that half the total, 500 million US-manufactured vaccines, will be ready to go in August.

"The R range for England is 1.2 to 1.4 and the growth rate range for England is +3% to +6% per day as of 11 June 2021."
Ouch. 

Delta Variant update
Public Health England figures up until 7th June show that:
England - 39,061 cases confirmed
Scotland - 3.035
Wales - 184
Northern Ireland - 43
In England 42 of those people have died.
23 were unvaccinated
7 had 1 dose (more than 21 days previously)
12 were fully vaccinated (more than 14 days after dose 2)
On initial look that seems bad - why would fully vaccinated people make up over 1/4 of the total? But wait. VACCINES ARE WORKING AGAINST DELTA. I cannot find the ages of those who have died, but before vaccinations around 3/4 of those who succumbed to COVID were over 70. Over half of the UK adult population are fully vaccinated. We can assume that the fully vaccinated are most likely to be older PLUS our most vulnerable people PLUS health and social care workers. Even if we take into account that COVID is spreading most among younger people right now, and some of those Delta people are still very poorly, if vaccines were not working, we'd have already lost a lot more fully vaccinated people. VACCINATIONS ARE WORKING. 

We also have Public Health England data on how effective vaccines are against Delta Variant. They are doing this as an average figure for both vaccines, but the Oxford AstraZeneca performs a little less well (we all know that), and the Pfizer BioNTech has mainly been given to our more vulnerable people who were most likely to have illness with symptoms and get tested (which seems ideal really), so it kind of balances out and is impossible to really compare fairly. This is an average of everyone vaccinated in the UK with either vaccine up until 16th May.
1 dose protection against Alpha 50.2%
1 dose protection against Delta 33.2%
2 doses protection against Alpha 88.4%
2 doses protection against Delta 80.2%

It seems ever more likely that on Sunday or Monday Boris will announce a delay to further reopening. He has muttered the word "irreversible" so many times that now he can't really reverse his decision on any relaxations being irreversible.
We aren't daft, we've been here before, anyone with a brain can see reopening when cases are going up, will just make cases continue to go up - but a bit faster.
The official case figures suggest we have a rolling 7 day average of about 6,561 new cases per day, compared to 5,113 last week.
The Zoe Symptom app. is over a year old and pretty accurate, and by looking at the symptoms people are reporting, they believe we currently have about 11,908 new cases every day, compared to 5,677 last week - well over double.

Today's surge testing Bingo Winners have a special treat. It's Staffordshire, and it's Leek! Congratulations. "Everyone aged eight and above who lives or works in Leek is strongly encouraged to take a PCR test."
I love Leek. I've driven Derby to Manchester (and back again) via Leek more times than you'd ever believe, and I'll tell you now, that hill is a killer for a 25 year old camper van. Elderly people cycle past and wave. 

And yet more data from Public Health England on natural antibodies - and this is from March - so will be with wild COVID and the Alpha (or Kent/UK) Variant.
Following natural infection with SARS-CoV-2:
a. Protection against symptomatic PCR-confirmed infection with SARS-CoV-2 is high for a period of at least 7 months, estimated at 81%.
b. Protection against all PCR-confirmed infections with SARS-CoV-2 is high for a period of at least 6 months, estimated to be 69%.
c. Protection against asymptomatic or atypical PCR-confirmed infections with SARS-CoV-2 is moderate for a period of at least 6 months, estimated at 40%.
d. Protective effectiveness against symptomatic PCR-confirmed infection in those aged over 65 is lower than in younger age groups, estimated at somewhere around 47.1% (they have less confidence in this result).
Remember this study has only been running for just over 7 months - we need to wait until next month to see where we are at 8 months. Average 81% protection against COVID with symptoms at 7 months is really the best result we could have hoped for.
Some mutations and different variants will have different outcomes, and indeed for the UK at least, we now need to know how protected you are from Delta after catching Alpha or wild COVID! 

Today's indieSAGE focussed on the Delta Variant, which seems to spread far more readily among children, and whether we should therefore move along with vaccinating children.
With daily new case rates we are back to where we were 3 months ago, and doubling every 9 days or so. The only good news there is that cases are still falling in Northern Ireland.
We can clearly see higher case rates spreading out from the areas affected by Delta.
Hospital admissions and bed occupancy are rising, and so far it looks very mild across the whole UK, but in Scotland and heavily affected areas, we can clearly see a rise, so the link between the disease and severe illness hasn't been entirely broken. We can't be precise because hospitalisations lag behind new cases by 1-2 weeks, people getting infected are younger, and vaccinations are working, but it is going up less quickly than we saw last year. 
If you include ALL of the population, of any age, we have only given 1 dose of vaccine to 39-42% (depending on which nation), and 2 doses to 17-28% (well done Wales!).
The biggest rises in prevalence are still in school aged children (secondary) and we can clearly see it is also rising in the age group which are the majority of their parents.
On May 28th 136,700 pupils were not in school for COVID reasons. Only 4,400 were confirmed cases (18,400 suspected). The majority were at home due to contact with a confirmed case. That's a lot of children - and it raises the question about whether we should vaccinate children sooner rather than later. 

Recently reports and studies from India have suggested a vegetarian diet may make you less susceptible to severe COVID disease.
Vegetarians are less likely to be obese, have diabetes, high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease, which are all comorbidities for COVID, so it's kind of obvious less veggies should end up in hospital overall.
Sadly its not a universal rule - being vegetarian doesn't actually guarantee you to be healthier (looks in mirror).

Steven Brandenburg is the misguided Wisconsin Pharmacist who purposefully removed almost 600 doses of the Moderna vaccine from a freezer in order to spoil them. 57 people were vaccinated from the vials before the issue was discovered.
Yesterday he was sentenced to three years in prison, and he has to pay for the damage - $84,000.
Luckily the vaccines appear to still have worked, and none of the vaccinated people appear to have been harmed physically, but can you imagine the stress? 

Canada's air and land borders have allowed essential travel only since March 2020, and anyone returning home has to quarantine for 14 days. Health officials have just announced plans to begin relaxing restrictions in early July - just for fully vaccinated people returning home. 

Luxury Cruise News:
The first major international cruise with American passengers, the Celebrity Millennium, set sail a week ago and will dock tomorrow after 7 days at sea.
All passengers had to prove they were fully vaccinated, and were also tested before they boarded.
Guess what happened?
2 passengers have tested positive in the Thursday testing.
The passengers are travelling together and both have no symptoms, but already the insurers are all talking about who is going to be liable, if anyone, in the event any other passengers now become ill. 

Drunk Late Night Tweet Of The Week:
"I now identify as the Prime mInister and declare this country back to the 'old' normal. TakeOffYourMask"
Gillian McKeith - that woman who used to identify as a "doctor" and rummage in people's poo on the telly. She was exposed as not being a doctor of any kind, making a lot of it up and not being very sciencey. I guess she still isn't. (Lay off the late night Sherry Gillian!)

It is the weekend, and I have my "oh my gosh what a week" Rum and Pepsi Max in hand. One of our elderly guinea pigs passed on today, and I have a child off school sick (they're actually sick, not with COVID), and it's likely my eldest grown up child actually has COVID (he's ill with a temperature and a cough, and his housemate has tested positive), and we had an electrical inspection yesterday which involved exposing every plug socket in the house (yes - including the ones behind white goods and wardrobes). I'm glad it's Saturday tomorrow! 

It is the weekend. Remember your treat - you've earned it. We all know we're potentially about to see another wave (hopefully with waaay less people getting very poorly). It's a bit "omg here we go again", but everything suggests vaccines are doing their job. Take some time off. Treat yourself, not everyone else. Something just for you. Bumps in the road, and we can take them on no problem.

Some numbers. All were born on this Earth, and all are unique:

Countries / Cases / Losses of life (since midnight GMT. In larger countries some states /provinces have yet to report today):

India 29,357,001 (+83,663) 367,081 (+3,984)

Russia 5,180,454 (+12,505) 125,674 (+396)

Iran 3,013,078 (+9,966) 81,796 (+124)

UK 4,550,944 (+8,125) 127,884 (+17)

Indonesia 1,894,025 (+8,083) 52,566 (+193)

Chile 1,461,419 (+7,941) 30,472 (+133)

Malaysia 646,411 (+6,849) 3,768 (+84)

Philippines 1,300,349 (+6,686) 22,507 (+196)

Turkey 5,319,359 (+6,261) 48,593 (+69)

Iraq 1,246,860 (+4,320) 16,668 (+20) 

Spain 3,733,600 (+4,142) 80,501 (+36) 

Mexico 2,445,538 (+3,672) 229,578 (+225)

Bolivia 400,047 (+3,233) 15,321 (+74)

Nepal 604,396 (+2,709) 8,305 (+67)

Bangladesh 822,849 (+2,454) 13,032 (+43)

.

.

.

Sources:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Daily hospital admissions 

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/992944/S1255_NERVTAG_-_Immunity_following_natural_infection.pdf

indieSAGE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkmKaKVcFDo

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.22.21257658v1.full-text

https://twitter.com/GillianMcKeith/status/1402345460753387521?s=19

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/skbaer/pharmacist-tampering-covid-vaccines-sentenced

https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/coronavirus-outbreak/story/are-vegetarians-really-lower-risk-contracting-coronavirus-1760497-2021-01-19

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-06-11/covid-delta-variant-around-60-more-transmissible-than-alpha-kent-variant-public-health-england-data-finds

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccines-astrazene/eu-advises-against-astrazeneca-shot-in-people-with-rare-blood-condition-idUSKCN2DN193

https://twitter.com/DHSCgovuk/status/1403396614442598400

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadian-reopen-border-phases-starting-with-vaccinated-citizens-source-2021-06-09/

G7 - https://twitter.com/i/events/1403110594765496320

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/celebrity-cruise-two-covid-positive-guests/index.html