So from BJ press conference tonight lifted from BBC, still sounds positive:"So there's a real effort by the Prime Minister to reassure on three fronts this evening:

• Firstly, that the AstraZeneca jab is safe; the Prime Minister was keen to stress it's the one he himself is getting this week
• Secondly, that the vaccine programme is still on track
• Thirdly, that so too is the roadmap out of lockdown."

Also on my modelling of assuming an average drop in week on week deaths of 35% (as the 14 day rolling average drop is 34%), as a linear projection only as we may hit some compression, we may hit the weekly average for deaths tomorrow of under 100, if not it will hopefully be Saturday, in addition using the same assumption from Saturday daily deaths should then stay under 100.

Putting it here in case it's more appropriate than in the other thread:

Brief, sad history about NHS’ T&T.

8 days ago my OH operated a flight to ABZ and back. Today she has been texted and then called by NHS Scotland to inform her that somebody has tested positive to Covid and that she should self isolate for 10 days from the event... i.e. 2 days.

She noted to the NHS Scotland lady that in the intervening days she went to India and back and was tested (negative) 3 times, last of which yesterday. The tracer checked with her superiors but still obliged her to self isolate for 2 days.

OH half then asked if other members of the household should isolate too (me), a question the tracer couldn’t answer to as we live in England.

I’m going to add this experience to mine (I received 30+ notification to isolate / not isolate in 3 days, plus a call about a trip I haven’t made) to conclude that this Track & Trace is not exactly surgically precise.

PS if anyone knows if I should self isolate for the next two days if I’m living in London and somebody tested positive in Scotland 8 days ago it’d be great as I don’t fancy trying my luck vs Chairman Priti.

it is easy for BJ & Co. to say the steps to unlock remain on track because it has been repeated ad naseum that each step to unlock would happen at the "earlier of" so they have already made it ok to fudge next month.

then whitty admitted it is still too early to see any general projections on data since children returned to school, unwilling to be baited to any indication the proposed apr 12 date is an absolute.

but lets say there is an upward trend of cases after we unlock in april becuase people are allowed to be social again... with no continuing vaccines for under 50s which prompts them to push the may 17 date back. but they can still say everything is on track even if may 17 gets pushed to june, for example.

A million thank yous for that paulaf I popped down to my local pharmacy before closing and after waiting around an hour, during which time they frantically called everyone on the reserve list and took other walk-ins older than me (rightly so) I struck lucky and got the very last dose of the day! 😁👍 Astra Zeneca for those interested... didn't feel a thing and no side effects as yet. Absolutely over the moon!

You're welcome, brilliant news glad the cunning plan worked, sore arm club tomorrow.

to be honest the major opening is April 12, that’s the ‘big bang’ the changes after that are more gradual

I am sorry that didn't work. The reason I suggested it was that the time, after the usual 09:00 hrs rush of people, we got to 10:00 and could see almost no-one waiting or arriving. The carpark was empty too. So I was thinking that there was some sort of reaction to all the AZ news and people were not turning up big time. Between 10 and 11 I vaccinated about 4 people instead of (up to) 40. Now I still don't know what was behind that, since from about 11:30 it picked up again and in the end I vaccinated closed to the usual amount. It may have been some local IT hiccup. We were supposed to have our last jab at 16:00 hrs but I was still going 90 minutes after that time. Anyway during the slowdown we would have jabbed anyone passing. Most people today were in their 40s I would say, but I don't always get much line of sight as to whether they have underlying conditions.

How do you know which pharmacies are administering and what time they stop? I am considering prodding daughter and her housemate to give this a shot. (ha!)

Self quoting to add that it mighr seem that if an English resident is told to self isolate from NHS Scotland then the person cannot claim the £500 support scheme for losing out work. My OH was due to fly on her last day of self isolation, Saturday, and will therefore miss out on basically a third of her monthly allowances... feels weird considering the word before “Kingdom” is “United”.

Maybe I got really lucky. I simply chose the most convenient pharmacy vaccination centre to me and Googled their normal closing time (1800) which also happened to be the time of their last booked vaccination. That might not always be the case though.

What was a bit sad was that a number of people in their 20s and 30s turned up and were really quite belligerent towards the staff when told they had almost no chance. My advice: be really nice to the people working there and if it doesn't work out be polite and try again. The impression I got was the bigger the vaccination centre, the better the chance for an end-of-day jab.

phone 119 for advice on whether you too need to isolate, though my non-medical understanding is that the rules say that only the person traced needs to isolate, their household being contacts of contacts rather than direct contacts, and so don’t need to isolate unless anyone in your household tests positive.

on consideration of the differences within our un-United kingdom, I may also be inclined to also ask 119 (NHS England) if your OH needs to isolate on the last day of the self isolation if she can produce a negative test that day.

Thank you! Do you think they'd see me if I'm not a patient? I actually didn't realise anywhere in York was doing the jab apart from Askham bar.

I think I could possibly be in group 6, but haven't been contacted, and don't know how to go about asking as my GPs phone line says not to call about the vaccine.

Book an appointment with your GP (most are doing teleconsults these days) and cover it off there.

Thanks, I'll see what I can do! :) I didn't want to be seen as wasting their time with something like this.

I booked Mrs Yorkieflyer in there on the national NHS website, she’s 50 and group 9, earlier date than Askham bar. You will only get in the clinically vulnerable list by persuading the GP I imagine but as we all know they are all working at home and the surgery’s are now triaging us away from even a phone appointment, so good luck trying to see a GP! As an aside, I genuinely wonder how many life threatening illnesses are going undiagnosed while they avoid the great unwashed? Credit due on the other hand to my brilliant dentist who said he didn’t have long enough arms to work from home 😀