According to ourworldindata, Germany's rate for positive test is about 8.70%. UK's 3.20%, France 2.20%, Italy 1.80%. Spain's 5.00% however it has to be said that Spain and Germany's data is from early September.

The US' positivity rate is 12% and climbing but obviously the problem is the dirty Europeans coming over!

I think so too, the positivity rate is at 10% which is really high.
Testing rate although lower does not reflect reality because the antigen tests people are doing regularly are not counted in the stats. If positive a case is reported but PCR not always done.

Daily data:

Cases 26,911* (38,013 last Thursday)
Deaths 158 (167)
Patients admitted 836 (933 on the 2nd)
Patients in hospital 8,339 (8,098 on the 8th)
Patients in ventilation beds 1,081 (1,060 on the 8th)
People vaccinated up to and including 15 September 2021:
First dose: 48,503,181
Second dose: 44,229,777

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now down 22.6% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is up 4.7%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 137.7 today. Because of data problems in Scotland, the cases number and vaccinations numbers do not include Scotland today. I would speculate that Scotland would have added 5,000 cases today.

100 percent of my daughter's teaching and tutorials are online, so you may not see much from that side of things.

Scotland though isn't it? Certainly in England it is different and there is face to face teaching.

For some reason I misread that as farce to farce teaching… I’m hoping enough of those students attending class are now sufficiently vaccinated to make a meaningful difference.

Some figures in this BBC story:

Don't start me on that! Anyway, from chatting to daughter, it sounds like almost all of her cohorts are all vaccinated apart from one! And, it almost makes my head explode, said student's mother is in the medical profession! But that aside, it sounds as though they all got vaccinated more for the "won't be able to go anywhere if we don't" which is fine by me. It's the lecturers that seem to be reluctant on some courses, others are "yay, back to teaching".

The amount of face to face teaching in England depends on the university and, I suspect, course in question. Partly it will also be a function of the amount of spaces available for teaching of an appropriate size and space (potentially allowing for some kind of spacing) and the university's risk appetite.

Having in a past life taught undergraduate seminars (typically 10-20 students) at a Russell Group institution, I can say with confidence that the ability to ventilate teaching spaces varies wildly. Often it is almost impossible - I can think of several rooms where I taught with no windows at all, where after 30 mins the air quite clearly stale. It doesn't help that, for example, a room with a nominal capacity of 20 could comfortably fit 12 - the people designating the room capacity had clearly never tried to actually fit that number of people in the room and get them to do anything!

As for testing after arrival, I find this logic deeply flawed:

If we want to make travel easier by removing tests, that is one argument and it can be made. Similarly, if we are prepared to risk the import of new variants because we deem the risk to be low enough - again, people's opinions might differ but it's a legitimate argument that can be made.

But if the problem is that an insufficient proportion of tests are being sequenced, the solution is to sequence more tests (and if there is a capacity issue, to address that) - not to say "only 5% are sequenced therefore we should scrap the whole thing". That is flawed logic.

Between all the leaks and mixed messages, I'm starting to get the sense those post arrival PCR tests won't be going away anytime soon.

Whilst the government have now commited to provide ongoing access to testing in the winter plan, it seems at least in England that shortly you will need to pre-register and obtain a collection code for lateral flow test kits from pharmacies. Was alerted to this by a poster in the local pharmacy window.

Codes can be requested from 1st Oct and codes will be required from 4th Oct.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/corona...have-symptoms/

Officially at St Andrews labs, courses and tutorials smaller than 35 students should be in person, lectures etc. should be online. Unfortunately my daughter's Masters modules are just above 35 and not large enough they would generally be broken up in to smaller tutorial sections. It seems like the undergrads are all mostly getting lectures online and tutorials/labs in person.

Daily data:

Cases 32,651 (37,622 last Friday)
Deaths 178 (147)
Patients admitted 909 (1,063 on the 6th)
Patients in hospital 8,068 (8,114 on the 9th)
Patients in ventilation beds 1,020 (1,051 on the 9th)
People vaccinated up to and including 16 September 2021:
First dose: 48,528,901
Second dose: 44,298,076

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now down 22.6% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is up 4.7%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 142.1 today. Even with the missing case data for Scotland yesterday, which is still absent without leave, the number of cases has been falling for a few days now.

Well sometimes it's ok to be wrong. Pre departure tests scrapped and day 2 PCR replaced with day 2 LFD. Personally, I'm a little uneasy with them completely scrapping day 2 PCR. Hopefully, there will still be some random sampling (i.e. pick ten random(ish) victims at disembarking, perhaps with a nod, wink and "there's a cougher* in 5c" from from the FAs).

* Yes, I am that cruel but bear in mind right now that the cougher would be me.

Do today's scores on the doors include Scotland's AWOL data from yesterday?

And for info, a couple of colleagues have self isolating (secondary school) teenagers at the moment. All are symptomatic, so so much for the young not getting ill with this thing.