COVID-19 Coronavirus UK and World News Update 9th June 2021
The UK added 35,707 cases today and now has reported a total of 5,058,093 positive cases of COVID-19. We completed 1,114,234 tests yesterday.
Between 3 July 2021 and 9 July 2021, 206,046 people had a confirmed positive test result. This shows an increase of 30.7% compared to the previous 7 days.
The counter says 45,697,875 people had been given at least one dose of a vaccine in the UK by midnight last night. 34,374,246 people had received 2 doses and will be considered fully vaccinated 14 days after that 2nd dose.
2,731 people were in hospital yesterday, Thursday 8th July, with 417 using a ventilator.
Between 29 June 2021 and 5 July 2021, 2,872 people went into hospital with coronavirus. This shows an increase of 55.9% compared to the previous 7 days.
In the 24 hours up until 5pm yesterday, we officially reported the loss of another 29 people who have tested positive to COVID-19 within 28 days, making a total of 128,365 losses of life in all settings.
Between 3 July 2021 and 9 July 2021, there have been 176 deaths within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test. This shows an increase of 43.1% compared to the previous 7 days.
Rep. Of Ireland 276,735 (+631) cases and 5,006 losses of life.
There have now been a total of 186,618,031 reported cases worldwide. The number of people who have lost their lives worldwide to COVID-19 is 4,030,970. Already 170,698,970 people have recovered.
“It's about preventing being exposed to the virus, and preventing you exposing others to the virus.
Look around in your community.
Know the local numbers.
If the virus is present in your community and you're a vulnerable person and you're not vaccinated, then you are potentially going to be exposed.
So the idea that everyone is protected and it’s “kumbaya” and everything goes back to normal, I think right now is a very dangerous assumption anywhere in the world.
We’d ask governments to be really careful at this moment, not to lose the gains that we’ve made.
This virus is evolving. This virus is changing, and we need to be very careful at this moment, so that the gains that have been hard won by the behaviours and actions of our populations are sustained. Individual behaviour and government support to that behaviour is extremely important.
And I would urge extreme caution in the complete lifting of public health and social measures at this time, because there are consequences for that."
Dr Mike Ryan, Executive Director, the World Health Organisation.
The UK Government can never say they weren't warned.
"The R range for England is 1.2 to 1.5 and the growth rate range for England is +3% to +7% per day as of 9 July 2021."
(In fact ipsos MORI say it is 1.87 today - which may be a record.)
The latest UK Infection Survey main findings for week ending 3rd July 2021:
- An estimated 332,900 people in England had COVID-19, around 1 in 160 of the population.
- Wales - 9,000 people, around 1 in 340.
- Northern Ireland - 6,100 people, around 1 in 300.
- Scotland - 53,200 people, around 1 in 100.
Scotland really are not doing too well right now.
"The Delta variant is now the most common variant across the UK."
"Latest data from Public Health England shows that both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID19 vaccines are 74% effective after the second dose for people who are immunosuppressed - so make sure you get both doses."
- overall vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease in risk groups is approximately 60% after one dose of either AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech, with little variation by age
- after 2 doses, vaccine effectiveness with Pfizer-BioNTech is 93% and 78% with AstraZeneca in people in risk groups aged 16 to 64
- in people in risk groups aged 65 and over, vaccine effectiveness with Pfizer-BioNTech is 87% and 76% with AstraZeneca
- for those who are immunosuppressed, vaccine effectiveness after a second dose is 74%, with similar protection to those who are not in a risk group – this rises from 4% after a first dose
GET. BOTH. DOSES.
Out of 44.8m first and 33m second doses of AstraZeneca vaccine administered in the UK, up until June 30th 2021, there were 399 reports of the rare blood clotting disorder. 71 people have died. A mortality risk of around 1 in a million. I am truly so very sorry for all of their friends and family.
Estimates from the COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance Report today are that in England alone, approximately 7,151,000 cases of COVID have been prevented, and 27,200 lives have already been saved, because of vaccinations.
3 research papers by the UK Government and Liverpool University this week have showed Lateral Flow Device tests to be 'effective under a variety of conditions, reliable and adaptable'.
They "analysed the use of LFDs in a variety of scenarios: against variants of concern; on patients with high or low viral loads; as part of mass testing campaigns; in the hands of inexperienced users and; with different types of swabs".
Importantly, they found no difference in performance with Delta Variant, which is very good to know seeing as we are about to place a lot more trust in these tests.
The NHS is really concerned about what's going to happen next. Exhausted staff in several major A&E departments have just had their busiest June on record, and there is no sign of that letting up. Latest NHS England figures are grim, as reported by the Health Services Journal:
"1,436,613 people went to type 1 EDs (which excludes minor injuries units and urgent care centres) in June — the highest since records began. This is up by 41.4 per cent compared with June 2020, when EDs were far quieter due to people staying away from hospital during the first pandemic wave, and up by 7.7 per cent compared with June 2019."
United Lincolnshire, and Barking, Havering And Redbridge University Hospital Trusts had A&E waiting times of over 4 hours for more than half of their patients.
Today's indieSAGE started by stressing they hate lockdowns as much as we do. They don't want lockdowns, they want freedoms. They want us to spend almost all of our time being our normal selves, and feel that by removing all restrictions and losing our advantage, we'll inevitably end up in hard lockdown again.
"It's not great, basically."
Good news is that Scotland does look like it may have peaked, and new case numbers are beginning to drop.
In all English regions case numbers are rising, except the North West where it's just dropping slightly. Very clearly the North East has a much steeper climb, and it looks like cases there are spreading more into older age groups.
Waaaaaaay more men than women are testing positive at the moment. Is this due to the football? I think it might not have helped...
Rate of vaccination is a bit slower just now, but still progressing well. They remind us that if we include children, we still have around 1/3 of our population unprotected.
Hoax Alert:
The 1947 Nuremberg Code doesn’t apply to COVID vaccines. Lolz.
The code was brought in to protect the rights of all people, including prisoners, to not be medically experimented on against their will. All experiments involving people should be for social good, and as safe for the participants as possible.
It is a code of practise for researchers and other scientists.
It doesn't apply to vaccines that have already been thoroughly tested and received official authorisation, and as Full Fact point out “Informed consent is still required for those receiving the COVID-19 or any other vaccine.”
True Alert:
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has stated that the sensitivity of the English and Welsh contact tracing app, might be reduced when social distancing measures are lifted.
(Because why? COVID will no longer be able to travel as far after July 19th? This is news to me... )
Obviously it would lead to less people being asked to self-isolate (and presumably more people going about their business unaware they are spreading COVID).
Apparently this is in response to the fact that the app. had to ping 60% more people this week to tell them to isolate, and Ministers think some of the public will just delete the app. instead.
(Right. So let me get this right. The app. is telling so many people that they have been exposed to COVID, that you are just going to turn it down so that you don't annoy people? Genius. Trump would be proud. In fact, hang on...)
Trump Of The Day:
Grant Shapps, UK Transport Secretary.
For using the Trump-inspired "we have too many cases because we are testing too much" method of problem removal.
Yesterday I published what I could find about children under 15 - with what data I could get from the ONS/PHE. It is a little behind and (as ever) incomplete, and only counted children up until age 15.
There is a new (not-yet-peer-reviewed) study out today and it has more complete figures on children up to 18 in England - although only up until February. Good news is that it doesn't look too worrying, and certainly not something any of us should lose sleep over.
12,023,568 children and young people live in England.
61 children and young people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 died between March 2020 and Feb 2021 (the first year of the pandemic).
25 died of SARS-CoV-2 infection; 22 from acute infection and three from PIMS-TS (multisystem inflammatory syndrome).
"99·995% of children and young people with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test survived."
Those "over 10 years, of Asian and Black ethnic backgrounds, and with comorbidities were over-represented compared to other children".
Quarantine rules will be relaxed for fully vaccinated adults and all children from 19th July - but that currently only applies to people who got their jabs in the UK. Grant Shapps says he'll announce what's going to happen about everyone else within the next couple of weeks.
It wasn't only live humans at sea when COVID took hold, hundreds of thousands of live animals were also being moved by ship. Closures of ports and borders has had, and is still having truly horrific consequences, especially in the case of a Spanish ship, the Elbeik last December. It was transporting 1,600 bulls on an 11 day journey to Turkey. but 3 months later they had been unable to find a port to land, 10% of the bulls had died and the rest were starving. They returned to Spain, where vets had little choice but to euthanise the remaining live animals.
COVID has really made the world sit up. Roughly 2 billion animals are shipped by sea each year, disruption to those journeys has made the last 18 months very difficult, and now that we can all see how easy it is to take a virus from one country to another, epidemiologists are joining the arguments against it too.
There's a table above with the different variants and what percentage of people who have been diagnosed with them have died. Don't compare different variants, because they arrived at different times, with different amounts of testing, and they affected different populations. The 'case fatality rate' for Delta looks fantastic, but we have vaccinations now, we have tons of asymptomatic testing, and Delta in the UK has so far mainly infected people under 25, so it can't be directly compared with variants we had last year.
That said, it's really fantastic to see a 0.2% rather than a 1.9%....
"We have now delivered over 80 million vaccine doses across the UK - this a phenomenal achievement. Thank you to everyone who has come forward for their jab. It is the best way to protect yourself and your loved ones."
Sajid Javid, UK Health Secretary (and exciting mathematician of the week).
A choice quote here from the ex-Head of Test and Trace, Dido Harding:
"I do appreciate a lot of people listening to this might find this rather incredulous given some of the way it's been reported, but I would actually argue that NHS Test + Trace has been success.. it has delivered on the objective to help break the chains of transmission."
Okaaaay.
The UK has responded to UNICEF Uganda’s Oxygen appeal by announcing a commitment of £500,000 (over $708,000) to support an increase in oxygen production and delivery, and improve the availability of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) at national and regional health facilities.
It includes:
- One hundred 7,500-litre oxygen cylinders for COVID Referral Hospitals
- Operational support at 4 oxygen plants and installation of a new one.
- PPE for COVID referral hospitals
- Training of health care workers in PPE and oxygen use.
It should benefit over 18m people.
It is the weekend. You did it. It was a bit of a week, and it's easy to feel demoralised, but well, as someone once said... 'God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.'
Get a smile back on your face and make the most of this weather! Take some time away from worrying, be busy or relax, whichever it takes. Do NOT forget to have a treat. You have really earned it this week. Remember, however bad your week was, Chris Whitty's was probably worse... Back Sunday (a bit early hopefully, I'll be watching something important with 4 of my sons in the evening...).
Play Outdoors, Don't Hug Everyone When You're Drunk, Save The NHS.
Some numbers. These are the complete reports from yesterday - the 24 hours up until midnight GMT last night, and I've included all countries which reported over 8,000 new cases. Every number is a unique human being:
Countries / Cases / Losses of life:
Brazil 18,962,786 (+53,749) 530,344 (+1,733)
India 30,752,108 (+43,538) 405,967 (+910)
Indonesia 2,417,788 (+38,391) 63,760 (+852)
UK 5,022,386 (+32,382) 128,336 (+35)
Russia 5,707,452 (+24,818) 140,775 (+734)
Iran 3,327,526 (+23,391) 85,397 (+136)
Colombia 4,450,086 (+23,275) 111,155 (+577)
South Africa 2,135,246 (+22,910) 63,499 (+460)
USA 34,676,896 (+19,347) 622,213 (+261)
Argentina 4,613,019 (+19,256) 97,904 (+465)
Spain 3,915,313 (+17,317) 80,997 (+28)
Bangladesh 989,219 (+11,651) 15,792 (+199)
Iraq 1,406,289 (+9,189) 17,444 (+31)
Malaysia 808,658 (+8,868) 5,903 (+135)
Mexico 2,558,369 (+8,507) 234,192 (+234)
Tunisia 473,229 (+8,315) 15,861 (+126)
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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://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-responds-to-unicef-ugandas-oxygen-appeal-with-life-saving-support-benefiting-over-18m-people
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1000611/S1297_SPI-M-O_MediumTermProjections.pdf
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1000678/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_18.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/lateral-flow-device-performance-data
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/asymptomatic-testing-backed-by-new-research-studies
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ae-waiting-times-and-activity/ae-attendances-and-emergency-admissions-2021-22/
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1413070768276135937?s=19
Nuremberg https://twitter.com/i/events/1413173001969827844
Mass infection is not the answer
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01589-0/fulltext
indieSAGE - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bOX_lYJe3A
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/covid-19-vaccines-highly-effective-in-clinical-risk-groups
https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1413369279668441090
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57766717.amp
kids - https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-689684/v1
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-plan-to-allow-vaccinated-expats-into-uk-without-quarantining-to-be-revealed-in-next-couple-of-weeks-12352084
https://twitter.com/sajidjavid/status/1413520841816612869
https://twitter.com/i/events/1413026311992348672
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-07/starving-cows-dumped-at-sea-prompt-calls-to-ban-animal-shipping
Grant Shapps: https://twitter.com/i/events/1413423900390658048
ipsos MORI poll - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eCYQVbQldY
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