If travel is opened up in May while still requiring a PLF, a negative test to fly and a two-test package, then you'll be taking your after-3-days test while still in the immigration queue at Heathrow.

The more I think about it, the more I'm thinking that May 17th (or 18th, or 22nd...) might be a whimper rather than a bang. There's still a lot of caution from the NHS who are understandably shell-shocked from 2020 and early 2021. There's still the issue of other countries allowing people in. There's still the issue of having 2 jabs and not one, and recognising the way the jabs have been given. There's the problem of what to do with those who only had the one jab, or no jabs. Then there's Priti and her idea of HMP Holiday Inn which, rest assured, isn't going away and is very much political.

My target for a hypothetical holiday will be November/December. In the meantime, what I'd really like to do is flying visits to see friends and family.

Post in haste, repent at leisure.

I received a phone call from my surgery this afternoon offering me an appointment for 15th March, so they have reached Group 9 rather quicker than my calculations. I can only presume they haven't announced it because otherwise they'll get swamped with calls from impatient people.

Based on c-w-s's flexibility statement, I asked what the policy was for vaccinating my wife at the same time given she was very close to qualifying of right. That was refused because it wasn't something that was allowed. However, I was told that she was very close behind anyway so the wait should be minimal.

So, very much a YVMW (Your Vaccines May Vary) approach across the country, which will inevitably lead to more postcode lottery claims.

I assume you have informed Mrs NWIFlyer that she would be less hassle if she was older. But yes, if we get a good couple of weeks with over 3 million vaccines, rather than 2-2.5 million then those late 40s will be getting vaccines in the next 3 weeks or so.

Another good day of decreases for cases, deaths and hospital admissions, which is good news. One surprise is the immense hike in the total number of tests, with 2 days well above 1m, are the lateral flow tests from schools being counted now?

If I were to inform her of that Covid would be the least of my worries, although it would put her one further up the list!

There are about 600k antigen tests, 750k PCRs. Most of the antigen tests are Lateral Flow Devices (LFD). LFD will appear as Pillar 2, so long as they are part of the government's testing system, and that includes both schools and corporations. So yes, schools are part of the spike, but companies too.

So if the false positive rate on the LFD tests is as high as 3/1000, that would imply up to 1,800 of the current results are false positives... I realise there is some debate whether the false positive rate is as low as 1/1000. Still it could prevent the cases figure dropping.

Positives on LFD should lead to a PCR test. Yes, you are right, the case rate could be a little higher than if we used PCR, but the longer term benefit, in terms of finding asymptomatics sooner, makes it worth doing. And realistically we can't easily go much higher than 0.75m PCRs a day, which by global standards is a huge amount in itself.

Are lateral flow positives included in the daily positives?

Is this going some way to explain the smaller (in relative terms) decreases in cases (from the week before) the last few days? Schools can’t be having an effect quiet yet..

It seems very likely that hospitalisations and deaths will keep coming down now due to the vaccines, but does anyone have any predictions for cases? If schools alone are going to cause a spike, are we going to be running at 5k cases + for the foreseeable future? And then you consider further reopening as well. Or will the vaccines, and their cuts in transmission, eventually do a job on them as well?

Yes, that's why there were 1,400,000 tests conducted today and still only 5926 cases! Deaths at 190 (35.4% down week on week) , clearly vaccines are having an effect so let's get open!

Which part of "at the earliest" do you not understand? :)

I think now we are in to step 1 it is clear the government will only take every additional step no quicker than 5 weeks before the last one. The logic of leaving time to see the effects of every change is quite sensible - no point taking the next step now only to find reopening schools causes a big spike in three weeks time and we have to reverse relaxation again.

LFD positives are included. False positives are deemed to be nearer 1 per 1000 incidentally.

I don't think it explains the apparent slowdown, or not by much. The situation where we were getting 40% reductions week after week was going to stop at some point. And I say apparent since we sometimes see a step in 7 day figures. We look at the last 7 day data, there's a weekend in there which is always a bit out of kilter, plus perhaps a slightly higher figure today, whereas the day leaving the stats happened to be a particularly low one. This means the 7 day average may be a bit higher than expected, and it may take a few days to see the real picture. Hence the 14 day figure is a better one to use rather than the 7 day or latest data. And the 14 day figures are still nicely falling. If we divide today's 7 day over 14 days it is 44.43%, which is quite a fast rate of reductions, and nothing odd. We had 40% much of last week, 47% the week before, anything below 50% is a decline.

Recent 7 and 14 day figures, respectively
10 March 60.11 - 135.29
9 March 60.74 - 141.29
8 March 61.73 - 145.37
--
3 March 75.16 - 185.08

As for what to expect, yes with all the testing going on it is bound so show up a few more positive cases from those who are asymptomatics. Until last week only contact traced people, health workers (and briefly Liverpudlians) were in this category. And to some extent you are now seeing the government's logic in terms of phasing the timings relating to Lockdown over a 5 week period. But take a step back, look at the 14 day figure, it is going in the right direction. And cases are not in a narrow sense a criteria relating to getting out of lockdown.

Interesting to note the gap between the steps in Scotland is 3 weeks so their CMO thinks that's ok. What if there's is no big spike in cases after the schools reopen in say 2-3 weeks time, will they re-model then?
Chris Whitty seems to be concerned about cases, that's all he seemed to talk about at the Committee yesterday, the steps may cause increased transmissions in the younger groups, (who are unlikely to be hospitalised), so he thinks its part of the lockdown plan as he it was using as a defence not to unlock earlier.