I believe the five day clock still starts from the earlier of onset of symptoms or the positive test. The start of symptoms is hardly a binary thing, so in practice if you can justify saying symptoms started 3 days before the test then you can be free after producing two negative tests 24 hours apart. It may not sound ideal but if it is regarded as fairer then compliance will be better.

Suddenly during a meeting at 10 am this morning I started to feel cold and shivery. I’m now running an oral temperature of 38.6. No other symptoms except for a mild headache and tiredness. I’m hungry and the apple I had earlier in order to take some ibuprofen was tasty!

LTF is negative. I’ve ordered a PCR. I assume I’ll have the results on Saturday at the earliest.

I felt a bit off on Monday too. Also cold and tired, the temperature peaked very briefly to 37.4. But by night I was fine. Until this morning. I did 3 LTF tests on Monday. Two swabbing my throat and nose, one swabbing nose only. Two different test types. I didn’t order a PCR back then because the guidelines had just changed.

I came back from Italy on Jan 1st, took a taxi home, didn’t see anything until last Saturday and Sunday. No one I saw has symptoms. That includes my partner. The only other people interaction I had was in shop under some railway arches, with no door last Saturday. I was wearing an FFP2 mask. No one else was.

Everything’s possible, but I’m thinking flu more than Covid. I’ll wait until this evening for another LFT.

We’re due to travel to the Canaries on 3rd Feb, so I’m hoping that if it is Covid and we both catch it, we’re still in safe territory.

In our household of 6 where we all got it within 10 days of each other, there was mostly still a faint line on day 7, and then nothing on day 8. One still had a line on day 8. Maybe we were a cesspool due to having it all :D Or we got early tests because there were infections around us. So if the requirement was to drop isolation after negative tests, we'd have had to isolate a little longer!

It was interesting to see some of those tests - for one in particular, the test line almost ignited like gun powder, way before the liquid got to the control line.

As a PCR test is required for those displaying symptoms associated with COVID, presumably the 'time stamp' for when symptoms start can be linked to the moment at which a PCR test was booked.

It could, but it isn't. Not on the NHS England system anyway.

More of a theoretical point than a practical one! Though I think it would be difficult for anyone following the rules and guidance on testing to argue with a straight face that they were experiencing symptoms significantly before they booked a PCR.

Then again, I think arguing lots of things with a straight face would be more difficult than they appear to be at the moment!

There's very little flu around, and if it was flu it would have taken a heroic effort for you to insert paragraphs into your post. Man-flu on the other hand.....

But it is unlikely to have anything to do with Italy, it's more likely to relate to things you did on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, whether COVID or the Common Cold. But you are doing the right thing to get a PCR.

I agree, flu is very unlikely. When I’ve had the real flu before, it’s always started with a sudden onset of high temperature first, then other symptoms followed suit. I have no joint pain or aching body. Good appetite. Let’s see if it’s Covid or not! Either I would have picked it up at the weekend, or I would be very unlucky, considering that I only left the house this week for a couple of walks.

By the way, after reporting my symptoms on Zoe on Monday, they invited me to order a PCR test even if I wasn’t eligible via the normal route. I didn’t get round ordering it, and I was feeling fine anyway.

Daily data:

Cases 109,133 (179,756 last Thursday)
Deaths 335 (231)
Patients admitted 2,184 (2,092 on the 2nd)
Patients in hospital 19,721 (18,064 on the 5th)
Patients in ventilation beds 785 (875 on the 5th)
People vaccinated up to and including 12 January 2022:
First dose: 52,031,355
Second dose: 47,804,588
Booster: 36,079,875

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now down 23.9% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is up 67.1%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 261.1 today. Cases in England have dropped below 100k today for the first time (excluding Christmas affected figures) since 22nd December. The rate of fall is matching the rate of rise that we saw after Christmas.

Australia today reported a record 150,702 cases which is 3.6 times the number reported by the UK when adjusted for population size.

Interesting point on Australia. Furthermore, if we dive into the numbers in Australia, the vast majority of infections are happening in Victoria (Melbourne) and NSW (Sydney) - the two largest states.

In NSW overnight, which has a population of roughly 8 million, they reported 92k cases, which amounts to 7 times the number reported by the UK when adjusted for population size.

Yes, I was just trying to add up all the new cases reported in the last 30 days and coming up (well) short of 35 million. The 1/15 thing - I guess someone testing positive might be positive for, say, a week - so you would need to maintain that for 7.5 weeks to make it half the population, but I don't think it was that bad for so long in England. Anyway, I hope the actual rate ends up being significantly lower.

The US and UK are seeing surging Omicron cases but that's where the similarity ends. There is how things are right now, for the UK, and how things could have been.

We just have better immunity levels, and probably better overall health (the amount of obese people in middle America is quite a sight), no?

It’s a shame to see Asian countries revert to type and choose the most ineffective path. It seems clear that light restrictions do very little to stop omicron, apart from hurt the economy further. Yet it doesn’t stop Thailand bringing in futile rules such as 9pm booze bans and quarantine to keep those pesky foreigners letting in a few more cases to add to the tens of thousands already there. Or the Philippines, which has seen the Covid rise to new records in a week, move back one level which just adds a few more basic capacity restrictions and closures. I see the guardian is bashing Aus for “recklessly letting it rip”, but when you’ve got the vax done, (barring a full lockdown), is there any other way? Surely peaks are near and herd becomes a possibility again.

On the subject of Aus/Asia, is there any logic to having a travel ban whatsoever when omicron is so prevalent now?

Closer to home, people around me have been curious about two things
- Why has the U.K. peaked before other EU countries, such as France and Denmark that have been blasted with higher rates of infection than us?
- Why has our death toll been relatively less affected?

The UK has strong connections with SA, with large expat communities moving between the two. The removal of other restrictions I think boosted travel between UK/SA when omicron appeared. I don't think it is any surprise that the UK got hit a little bit earlier than elsewhere. Hopefully France is close to its peak now. Australia is a good example of how pointless travel restrictions are. I hope we are done with those in the UK now.