Misco60

I agree that there is now little point in travel restrictions.

However, I would suggest that Australia is actually a good example of how effective travel restrictions are, having managed to hold the virus at bay until the majority of its population was fully vaccinated. Cumulatively, Australia has seen 100 deaths per million people, the UK 2,200. Cases are now rocketing in Australia but, having now vaccinated a much higher proportion of its population than the UK has (79% vs. 71%), its daily death rate per million is only about a third of that in the UK.

corporate-wage-slave

One big difference is that the UK was probably nearing the end of an extended Delta surge, which was of course at quite a high level when Omicron arrived. With quite extraordinary speed, Omicron displaced Delta in the UK very quickly, there is very little Delta left and at current sequencing samples it's about 95% Omicron, 4% Detla, 1% everything else. However other parts of Europe, in mid December 2021, had not reached maturity on the Delta surge, some some of these countries are effectively seeing a surge which is (say) 80% Omicron, 20% Delta. Germany is still "only" 77% Omicron at this point. There are also big differences in case tracking reporting methods.

That's also a factor on the death rates, since I'm not sure that there are big differences now. Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain are all broadly on 3 to 4 deaths per million population per day. Infection case numbers are reported as wildly different but health care standards are broadly similar. UK should be on the lower side, we are a relatively young population and age is the biggest risk factor, but in fact death rates in the UK have more than doubled since mid December, and may go up higher in the next few days. I'm expecting to see a plateau around the end of next week and reductions thereafter.

ringingup

I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid to accidentally touch my tongue as I was taking the swab out of my mouth. Instructions say send anyway, but I have an extra kit which was meant to be for my partner who is absolutely fine and asymptomatic… not sure what’s best! Perhaps corporate-wage-slave can come to the rescue?

DaveS

Daily data:

Cases 99,652 (178,250 last Friday)
Deaths 270 (229)
Patients admitted 2,423 (2,447 on the 3rd)
Patients in hospital 19,539 (18,527 on the 6th)
Patients in ventilation beds 777 (868 on the 6th)
People vaccinated up to and including 13 January 2022:
First dose: 52,051,876
Second dose: 47,836,785
Booster: 36,191,724

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now down 29.5% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is up 66.9%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 267.0 today. UK cases continue to follow the Gaussian journey downwards with England leading the rapid fall and hopefully the other nations soon to follow. This takes us back to December 21st on the other side of the curve.

DaveS

I wouldn't worry so long as you did not suck it or chew it.

corporate-wage-slave

Send it in. If it happens again, just repeat the throat bit all over again with the original swab, or borrow a new swab from a lateral flow kit. The reason for not touching your tongue is that the virus doesn't live there, and your tongue has a mini sucker like surface which is at risk of wiping off those viral particles off the swab, after getting there from the throat. A brief touch won't make much difference, particularly if you are teeming in the SARS virus but you want to avoid wiping away any viral fragments if you were in the early or weak stage of infection. So just repeating the process from the beginning would do the trick.

ringingup

My intuition made me do exactly that. I went over my tonsils again. Maybe not four times on each side, but there was good contact. Thank you!

Silver Fox

Looks like Wales realised there is a 6 nations to be played and the money would be better spent in Wales, plus Twickers was too expensive.

Covid in Wales: Restrictions to ease after Omicron peak

Dan1113

TBH I don't see the point of the PLF.

I was sitting next to someone who was confirmed positive within a day of the flight. We reported the positive both with the positive LFD, putting the flight details in, and of course the day two test.

Nobody ever traced us, flight-wise.

Misco60

Perhaps we're talking about different things, and it clearly depends on how you define 'fall', but by my calculations England is seeing the slowest fall in cases.

Today's 7-day reported case total in England is 774,189. A week ago it was 1,024,328. That's a fall of 24.4%.
In Scotland the figures are 61,151 today vs. 110,570 a week ago. A fall of 44.7%
Northern Ireland 22,200 vs. 50,877. A fall of 56.4%
Wales 31,739 vs. 74,760. A fall of 57.5%.

UK-wide: 889,279 cases vs. 1,260,535. That's a fall of 29.5% - on which we agree.

DaveS

You need to be a bit careful when comparing the weekly averages as last weeks included the holiday backlog. I have been looking at the daily reported figures for the last few days. The fall for the UK today was nearly 10,000 which is the same as the fall for England alone. Having said that, it does look like cases are falling in Scotland now. I hope we will be in a much better position for all of the UK in a few days.

PxC

And hopefully Boris survives just long enough to boot out plan B... or maybe he will keep it as a last middle finger to the CRG

USA_flyer

Its an unnecessary faff, I agree, ditch it.

lhrsfo

I'd love the input of our super-wise fellow contributors - cws I'm thinking especially of you - about the new anti-virals. It's now a couple of weeks since the infrastructure was put in to deliver them to vulnerable, including elderly, people quickly enough for them to be effective. I'd love to know how they are working and when we are likely to understand how much protection they offer. I have a 87 year old aunt who is super-healthy but worried sick. Living in London, I'm banned from seeing her as she is very aware that I might arrive during the period when I'm infectious but not yet testing positive. She's beginning to see that, at some point, this ultra-cautious approach will have to stop, so some statistics on their effectiveness on the old but otherwise well would be hugely encouraging. Then, I feel, that life could start returning towards normality.

lhrsfo

It serves the same purpose as the old landing card, which hung around long after its sell by date.

Sadly, there will be lots of vestiges of COVID that hang around for years, I fear, and well after their justification has long since gone, or has changed to a general let's keep tabs on people sort of justification. They will be like the fragments of the disease itself, tricking PCR tests into false positives for weeks after the disease has gone.