I cannot see travel testing & quarantine requirements being lifted unless it is confirmed that the vaccines prevent severe Covid-19 (and death) against the new variants.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2102214
Despite the above paper, I think there is a high probability that the vaccines will prevent severe covid-19 and death, but I can understand the caution.

My big fear (feel free to say I am wrong) are things like the ZA variant (that yesterday was in the news for AZ being completely useless against) and the fact that even if is not really spreading in the UK, it seems to be very prominent in places like France and Sweden. How do we manage that.

Ok, but reading that article it seems that out of 750 people with the vaccine 19 people developed mild-to-moderate symptoms of Covid. Hardly 1348 AD figures. Sure, they might be enough to convince Australia to lock itself away from the world until AD 2099 but for the rest of the globe it mightn't be as clear-cut.

And, besides, there are other vaccines. Pfizer if memory doesn't deceive me should work better.

Closed borders with hotel quarantines for exceptions.

I read a report yesterday that all variations are 99.7% similar to the original Wuhan sequence, and that there is no scientific evidence that any of the variants are more deadly or more transmissible. And that any immunity, acquired or vaccinated, will work perfectly well against any new strain. I'll stick a cite back in here if I find it again.

"News"? That ended on March 23rd 2020.

Speaking of the hotels... any ideas of how many people have been quarantined there? and how many positives?

There are some queries upthread about how Lateral Flow Devices (LFD) are impacting infection case statistics in the UK, and I've done some delving into this.

What we have seen from 8 March onwards, when schools were reopened, is that some places have seen confirmed cases gone from 80% PCR to around 30% PCR. There has been almost been a neat swap - the total confirmed cases, bottom line, has stayed the same or drifted slightly down but the source of that confirmed case has changed.over. So take Northumberland (population 316k), on 1 March while the schools were mainly shut, we were averaging 30 cases per day, of which 22 or so would typically be PCR and 8 LFD or similar, we have (e.g.) a large prison in the county, and LFD was used in surge testing, so LFD isn't new as such. Now (15 March) we are averaging 21 cases a day, but PCR is only about 6, the other 15 or so are LFD. These numbers bounce around a bit from day to day depending on whether we have school data.

Now let's go through the LFD process. Schools are asking secondary school pupils, teachers and support staff to do 2 tests a week, so 6 tests before the Easter holidays. The first 3 tests were admiminstered within the schools, so that the children get to be supervised in how to swab accurately for LFD by teachers and volunteers. The schools would process the devices and send text messages out confirming the results, thereby immediately updating the national statistics, which is why the number of test bounced up overnight, the system is actually quite slick. However from the end of this week, and onwards, this changes in two stages. Firstly children will be given LFD to take home, and then the tests (which are not compulsory, but schools are pretty adept at moral blackmail) are administered by parents, and it's on them, or probably their more digitally aware progeny, to update on online website with the LFD barcode and hence the national statistics. Secondly, as previously noted, schools close for the Easter break around Friday 26 March.

Any child getting a positive result from the first 3 LFD tests is sent home to self isolate with their family and any other close contacts (but not the whole class) for 10 days, and this is a big chunk of the figures we have seen in the last week. They are not supposed to get a PCR test since the much criticised logic is that the supervision process prevents most false positives. I think that has a one off effect, at least in part - there will of course be further new infections But that aspect changes when we get to home testing, a LFD positive means the parents then need to arrange a PCR test to confirm whether or not the test is positive. The national statistics therefore revert back to largely PCR based results.

However if you consider the one off effect of systematically testing the entire secondary school population for essentially asymptomatic cases, these cases being quarantined, the switch from school to home based testing, the switch to home based statistics reporting / PCR follow-up, then finally the Easter holidays, my suspicion is that we will see a drop in cases from the middle of next week. To nuance that a little, companies and other employers are also being asked to give their staff LFD to take home - so that too will bring up asymptomatic cases, but again any positive result is supposed to be confirmed with a PCR.

My understanding is it has been like 100 a day and many are from Portugal. I think the thought is that the number of people will decrease based on Friday’s adjustments.

I find this baffling. Why wouldn’t you go spend 10 days in Madrid? But I guess some people don’t think outside the box or understand the rules.

Not sure about England, but in Scotland, primary staff are also getting their tests twice a week.

it will never happen as a blanket approach.

oh and now over 50’s eligible for booking an appointment online for nhs England down from over 55’s, going down the list fast

Over 40s are now being offered jabs in some places, and that will probably be extended to everyone online fairly soon. There are 5 million in group 9, the last of Phase I, so that could be processed in the next week or so, if all goes well.

so we are over one month ahead of schedule technically?

and I am assuming no change to lockdown lifting timeline despite that good news.

to be honest April 12 is when things pretty much get to normal, I am just curious to see how long social distancing regs will be around until June or will it be brought forward (I would like to stand at a bar for the first time in a while or enjoy my drink outdoors standing without table service)

Indeed one of our neighbors who is under 50 was able to book.

If that is processed over the next week, we are approximately 3 weeks ahead of schedule, with a ramping up for the next 3 - 4 weeks. Does this mean we are on track for all over 18s to be vaccinated by mid-late May roughly? There is about 30 million I think after Phase 1 is done, and taking into account second doses as well, at a rate of 4-5 million doses per week, that is achievable I guess?

And this is dependent on a 90% uptake of vaccines, which I'm going to assume will decrease as we move down the age ranges.

Phase I was for 32 million maximum, so Phase II is "only" 21 million, so somewhat lower than your figure. We haven't done 4 million in a week yet, and it would probably only be for a few weeks at that speed, but your maths are probably about right, bearing in mind that there may be a bit of a slowdown over the Easter weekend. There are also the 2nd vaccinations, of course. By end of May seems possible at this point in time.