COVID-19 Coronavirus UK and World News Weekend Update 5th / 6th June 2021.

COVID-19 Coronavirus UK and World News Weekend Update 5th / 6th June 2021.

The UK added 5,341 cases today and now has reported a total of 4,518,892 positive cases of COVID-19. We completed 806,272 tests yesterday.

The counter says 40,333,231 (76.6%) people had been given at least one dose of a vaccine in the UK by midnight last night. 27,661,353 (52.5%) people had received 2 doses and are fully vaccinated.

932 people were in hospital on Thursday 3rd June, which is the latest day reported. We have a rise in cases, but hospitalisations and losses of life, as we know, follow 3-5 weeks behind. We really are a little early to be able to assess how effectively vaccinations are protecting people from severe illness just yet - but we should begin to see it over the next week or so. Fingers crossed.

In the 24 hours up until 5pm yesterday, we officially reported the loss of another 4 people who have tested positive to COVID-19 within 28 days, making a total of 127,840 losses of life in all settings.

Rep. Of Ireland 264,449 (+313) cases and 4,941 losses of life.

There have now been a total of 173,913,062 reported cases worldwide. The number of people who have lost their lives worldwide to COVID-19 is 3,740,587. Already 156,852,847 people have recovered.

"In just six months 40 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
Thank you to everyone who has been instrumental in getting us here. Please keep coming forward for both doses."
Boris Johnson, UK PM

We've got a lot of Bingo winners today. Congratulations to the following residents:
Extra surge testing:
Canterbury - CT1 and CT2
Maidstone - ME14 1
Targeted areas in Bradford
Extra surge testing for everyone over 12:
Reading - RG1  3, RG1  5, RG1  6, RG1  7
Wokingham - Bulmershe & Whitegates, Evendons, Norreys, Wescott

On Sky News this morning Matt Hancock confirmed vaccination rollout to people in their 20's will begin next week.
He also said that most people going to hospital with COVID are unvaccinated. 

We were informed last Thursday by Grant Shapps, Travel Minister, that part of the reason for the UK adding Portugal to the Amber Travel List was the Nepal Variant.
This is a very new thing, and it's very much an unknown. Nepal has virtually no genome testing, so it's really impossible to assess the situation accurately, but Japan has detected 14 cases, and 13 were travellers arriving from Nepal. The UK has already detected 20 cases, and at least 90 have been detected worldwide.
The Nepal Variant is Delta Variant (Indian) with an additional K417N mutation.
The reason people are twitchy is because it's believed this K417N mutation is more capable of escaping vaccines,  so mixing it with the highly catchy (and possibly more likely to send you to hospital), Delta version of COVID doesn't seem like in any way a good thing. 

Matt Hancock has a media article out today:
"As we mark six months of the UK’s vaccine programme, we all have a role to play to ensure we make this lap of our race out of this pandemic the last lap. My piece on how Britain is leading the way out of this pandemic.."
Intriguing as Matt Hancock's reasons for thinking we might be 'leading the way out of' anything are, it's behind a paywall, for the Torygraph, so I'm just imagining what he might have said. And 'Tsk'...
(I don't have an issue with a paywall, I have an issue with a national Health Minister during a pandemic sharing his thoughts behind a paywall.)

Boris Johnson will ask G7 leaders next week to "end the coronavirus pandemic, by vaccinating the world by the end of 2022".
I honestly hope that they mean this. The whole "vaccinating the world's health workers in the first 100 days of 2021" didn't go so well. It still hasn't happened. 

USA, NOT UK - A message for the Americans among you from the CDC:
"If you are fully vaccinated against COVID19, you can resume activities without wearing a mask or staying 6 feet apart, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal or territorial laws, and local business and workplace guidance."

Apparently Dido Harding stepped down from English & Welsh Test & Trace in April. Who knew? It's being reported that she's considering applying to become the new head of the NHS, when Sir Simon Stevens steps down in a couple of months.
Really? Really? Wow. I'm not saying she wouldn't do a great job. I mean, she might. But if she does get the position then I'll believe a hamster really can become Transport Secretary.
Thankfully the Government anti-corruption Tsar will be close at hand to make sure nothing untoward occurs, he is Dido's husband after all. 

The Telegraph have been examining the UK's Long COVID situation. A million people in the UK have reported symptoms lasting for weeks or months after illness.
376,000 people across the UK are still reporting symptoms a year after infection.
The most common symptoms are: Fatigue - 55%
Shortness of breath - 41%
Muscle ache - 31%
Problems concentrating - 29% 

On Saturday the G7 nations (Canada, UK, USA, Germany, Japan, France and Italy) agreed a 15% minimum tax charge for business. This is huge news, and should hopefully end the days where Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook and others register themselves in territories where they can get away without paying tax, or by paying a very small token sum. It meant they could underpay by billions and get away with it, but you can't underpay by £50 and get away with anything.

There has been massive cooperation to help Taiwan over the last few days, as they are reporting over 300 new cases a day, and are facing their biggest outbreak of the pandemic. They have been a real success story, but the new variants are harder to control. So far (there wasn't any urgency) Taiwan has only vaccinated around 3% of their population, so now the race is on.
Japan on Friday delivered 1.24m doses of AstraZeneca vaccine for free. This more than doubles the amount Taiwan has received in total.
The USA are also offering help, 750,000 doses out of the 80m Joe Biden has pledged will shortly be on their way to Taiwan. 

Scotland's longest hospitalised COVID patient went home this weekend. 63 year old Neil McLaughlin was in hospital for 195 days, and spent 167 of them in Intensive Care. I really do wish him well in his recovery, as I do everyone in this position. 

On Friday, to mark the end of the G7 Health Ministers' Meeting, 10 Japanese Cherry (Sakura) Blossom trees were planted at the Oxford Botanic Garden. They represent the G7, the World Health Organization and global healthcare staff, and are a memorial to remember those who have lost their lives to COVID-19 worldwide.
Sam Foster, the Chief Nursing Officer at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust planted a  tree on behalf of health and care staff. She was also the person to administer the first Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine dose to a patient outside of clinical trials, back on 4th January.
In Japan Cherry Blossom trees are a very important flower. They remind us of spring, a time of renewal, and as the blossoms fade and fall over just 2 weeks, they symbolise the transient nature of life. 

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has urged all secondary school and college students, and their families, to take a coronavirus test before returning to the classroom. People have mixed in different groups from usual over the week, been to different places and spoken to different people. If you need to test - do it now while you remember - especially if you live in an area with Delta variant or high levels of COVID.

Some people. They look like numbers, but they are all people:

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

India 28,900,151 (+91,779) 348,923 (+2,139)

Russia 5,126,437 (+9,163) 123,787 (+351)

Chile 1,427,956 (+7,690) 29,937 (+121)

Philippines 1,269,478 (+7,228) 21,898 (+166)

Malaysia 616,815 (+6,241) 3,378 (+87)

Indonesia 1,856,038 (+5,832) 51,612 (+163)

Iran 2,966,363 (+5,612) 81,063 (+122)

Turkey 5,287,980 (+5,386) 48,164 (+96)

UK 4,516,892 (+5,341) 127,840 (+4)

Iraq 1,224,992 (+3,314) 16,538 (+20)

Nepal 588,124 (+3,024) 7,898 (+99)

Sri Lanka 205,333 (+2,976) 1,696 (+40)

Thailand 177,467 (+2,671) 1,236 (+23)

Japan 760,323 (+2,652) 13,523 (+74)

Mexico 2,432,280 (+2,649) 228,754 (+186)

Bolivia 385,734 (+2,277) 14,981 (+81)

Italy 4,232,428 (+2,275) 126,523 (+51)

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Sources:

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

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

https://t.co/BqttZoPJd6

https://twitter.com/G7/status/1401465806568013825?s=19

https://news.sky.com/story/nepal-variant-is-it-in-the-uk-12324467

https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/global-event-news/covid-19-know-about-delta-k417n-mutant-which-has-been-spotted-about-90-times-worldwide.html

https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1401463819675766786?s=19

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/unde-30s-invited-covid-vaccine-matt-hancock-b938985.html

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scots-longest-covid-intensive-care-24252883

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/japans-covid-vaccine-donation-will-more-than-double-taiwans-supply.html

https://twitter.com/WilliamYang120/status/1401365910267449349?s=19

https://twitter.com/WilliamYang120/status/1401387064281604101?s=19

https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1400874905936220162?s=19

https://t.co/gcYIC5Qsh2

https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1401193513975533570?s=19

https://t.co/ZduMnbVFlZ

https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1400874909774094338?s=19

https://twitter.com/CDCgov/status/1400917351411990531?s=19

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/participate-in-activities.html

 http://www.gov.uk/government/news/memorial-trees-planted-in-oxford-to-remember-lives-lost-around-the-world

"The full scale of Britain's long Covid problem revealed" https://twitter.com/i/events/1400874972361465858?s=09

https://www.thejapaneseshop.co.uk/blog/cherry-blossom-meaning/

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/weekly-statistics-for-nhs-test-and-trace-england-20-may-to-26-may-2021/weekly-statistics-for-nhs-test-and-trace-england-20-may-to-26-may-2021

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-testing-drive-ahead-of-return-to-schools-next-week

https://twitter.com/davidschneider/status/1401478847233761281

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/japans-covid-vaccine-donation-will-more-than-double-taiwans-supply.html

https://twitter.com/MattHancock/status/1401512592154181637

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/05/britain-leading-way-pandemic/

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