ahmetdouas

you had me at ‘sources’

paulaf

Meanwhile both Paul Charles and Sean Doyle saying the UK/US travel corridor may be open by mid-May.

KSVVZ2015

Sunday times also has an article entitled will the US be our savior this summer?

related tidbit just to illustrate how different things are. AA plans to have its full fleet back in service by may. Sure they retired about 10% of capacity last year (old planes phased out a couple years early) but still...

KARFA

Perhaps a more accurate line would be there will be a system in place from May/June, but there will be few green countries and this is likely to be the case until late summer?

Considering the way things are heading in mainland Europe atm I am not sure this should be news to anyone tbh.

flashware

I'm just wondering how much of a 'sure thing' it is to maybe take a few days off after April 12. Accommodation has to be self-contained, so options are a bit more limited but there's a few places I have my eye on that only offer cancellation within 48 hours of booking, then it's a 50% hit. Those with more flexible cancellation policies are either not suitable (location wise) or much more of a premium. I'm thinking that domestic UK holidays are still going to be OK and step 2 will indeed happen on April 12, as would have thought we'd hear murmurs already if that wasn't going to be the case. If so, I could just take a punt and book the less flexible options...... decisions, decisions!

corporate-wage-slave

I haven't had this from anyone making the decision, which is effectively Whitty and Vallance, but being a few steps removed from that I see:
- deaths falling far faster than HMG had dared to hope
- bed occupancy lower than expected, the NHS should be able to cope until next October
- infection rates pretty much as expected
- variants not out of control
- vaccinations going better than expected, particularly the high take up in risk groups, 95% and rising rather than 80-85%
- we seem to have settled on vaccinations stopping 50% of community transmission, when this was unknown a few weeks ago, so R should be well below 0.5 when we get everyone done
- so far at least, fewer problems at secondary schools compared to expectations.

So I think 12 April is going to happen.

KSVVZ2015

All positive!

does the imminent arrival of moderna change anything for the better in terms of vaccination capacity in April?

PS NHS registration finally came through today. Thanks for telling me to get on with that!

The _Banking_Scot

Hi,

If planning on just after April 12, I would avoid Scotland at the moment ( we will still being urged to stay local until late April and restrictions on outdoor hospitality are due to be relaxed on 26th April)

Regards

TBS

paulaf

So they making the decisions then not HMG, that's a bit worrying.

BJ was very upbeat yesterday about the roadmap saying the data was all good, (better than expected though is what you're saying), shame they won't bring any of the dates forward knowing this.

Misco60

It's not at all worrying: they are the experts in the relevant fields, after all, and HMG has learned from bitter experience that it is probably better to listen to the advice of the experts than go off on a more desirable, over-optimistic path.

corporate-wage-slave

Congratulations, you just need some Bernie Sanders mittens and you're all set. It also allows you to check the national website vaccine booking site from time to time, just in case you're in an area or group going early:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/corona...s-vaccination/

Doubtless the Moderna vaccines will help, but no-one believes these things until they are heading up the M1 to the distribution centre. Also the initial supply tends to be lower than expected too. The vaccine supply next week looks OK to me, but I don't know how the week after Easter will go yet. But your cohort probably has a better chance of Moderna than Pfizer now, since I imagine further Pfizers will be more for second doses. Half my vaccinations next week will be Pfizers, whereas the last 2 weeks have been AZ only.

The buck stops with Boris, as you would expect, it's just he won't go against their advice. I don't think it makes a difference, they were all involved in the original road map and it seems to be working well, so far, so I'm sure there will be a good consensus to go ahead with the 12 April openings.

The _Banking_Scot

Hi,

My mother ( 76) received a text message inviting her for her second jab on Thursday this week . This will be just over 8 weeks after her first jab ( Pfizers)

After my AZ jab on Thursday pm had no side effects ( apart from the upper arm but it was minor- and it really was when you were thinking about it that you could feel it being slightly different than the left arm- it was not sore to touch and only when lying on the arm could you feel it marginally. I skipped my Thursday night run but ran on friday night with no effects.

Regards

TBS

USA_flyer

I can't wait to get my jab. Apparently there was a 1000 unfilled slots on weds at our local vaccination site. Hopefully that won't continue into next week and people in my cohort get the call. (I'm 45).

Silver Fox

I really wonder if the unfilled shots are due to admin mishaps. Wife got the letter to book for her first jab (no text/call), when she logged on it said "you have missed your first jab you will have to rebook" (or similar). Mate today tried to book his second jab as he had heard nothing, and it said he had not had his first jab. So, there is something not quite right with the admin. Even so 1000 slots unfilled in a day is a lot.

cauchy

Perhaps already reported, but if anyone's looking for a breakdown of cases by PCR test vs Lateral Flow, it's available at

https://api.coronavirus.data.gov.uk/...ate&format=csv

Or you can build your own query at https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/download.

This is England-only data. For example, in the week of 15 to 21 March, 72% of cases were PCR detected, 13% were Lateral Flow+PCR confirmed, and then 16% were Lateral Flow only (and these don't add up 100% due to rounding, I know!). So really, if one wants to try to compare against historical data, it's the symptomatic daily average of 3300 cases that you'd presumably want, not the extra 1300 that come in via the Lateral Flow programme.