I would also be keen to know how anti-virals are working, but this one is incredibly difficult to establish and it could easily take months to find out.

The four anti-virals (two of which are particularly in the frame) are given to people like your aunt if they have a symptomatic positive result. And my experience of dealing with older patients is that they tend to price in a fair amount of symptoms and say "oh that's nothing", so maybe you bear that in mind. Then Omicron we know can have fairly mild impacts for those vaccinated, particularly those recently boosted. Then for the general population only 1% of infections result in a hospital visit. So even with a large pool of people taking anti-virals it going to be incredibly hard to work out if they have much impact. The development of these drugs was also based on the unvaccinated. However the methodology is pretty sound, and my middle distance assumption - as was the case at a similar point with HIV's anti-virals development - that if you throw everything at newly positive cases you can more-or-less neutralise the disease. HIV went from a death sentence to something now that doesn't affect longevity, and is arguably less worrrying than diabetes.

As for meeting your aunt, well one thing about Omicron is that it happens fast and Lateral Flows are accurate at picking it up. So personally if you did genuinely and fully self isolate for a few days beforehand and did lateral flows, then I think the risk should be very low. But we also know the virus doesn't jump that far and can't survive long outside a body, so if you chose your venue wisely, something outdoors based or very well ventilated, and kept 3 metres away, then that perhaps would be a good starting point for you and your aunt. The only thing to watch is inadvert activities such as sharing a taxi or spending time in a lift to get to the venue. So long as your aunt is up to date with her vaccines I am sure she can cautiously rebuild her social life.

Interesting and balanced piece in The Herald today. Full article at Covid Scotland: Did Christmas curbs really make 'no meaningful difference' to infections?

Summary / highlights:HAVE recent Covid restrictions "failed to make any meaningful difference" to infections - or are we in a "better position" than we would have been without them?

As so often in the pandemic, opinions are mostly split down political and ideological lines.

Infections per 100,000 of population very similar in Scotland and England - you might conclude that the measures made no difference. But these figures are based largely on test results. That can be skewed by everything from the availability of test slots, to asymptomatic infected people failing to get tested.

The Office for National Statistics household surveillance project is therefore a more accurate gauge of the virus' genuine prevalence in the community.

According to it, England went from one in 60 people infected in the week ending November 27 to one in 15 by the week ending December 31 - a four-fold rise in prevalence. In the week ending January 7, the estimate was unchanged at one in 15, suggesting that infections are not actually in decline quite yet.

In Scotland, virus prevalence increased three-fold over the same period - from one in 65 to one in 20 in the weeks ending December 31 and January 7. Infections therefore lower in Scotland.


Similar patterns emerge when hospital admissions and deaths are compared.

Between December 1 and January 8, a total of 3,744 Covid patients were admitted to hospital in Scotland out of a population of 5.47 million: a rate of 68.4 per 100,000.

In England, with a population of 55.6m, there were 48,528 Covid admissions: a rate of 85.8 per 100,000.

On Covid deaths - 4,845 in England from December 1 to January 11, and 322 in Scotland - the rates were 8.6 and 5.9 per 100,000 respectively.

In other words, the recent Covid hospital admission rate has been 25% higher in England than Scotland, and the death rate 46% higher.

But it is very difficult to unpick how much the better position in Scotland is down to the Government's "protective measures" per se, and how much would have come about anyway through voluntary behaviour changes and higher uptake of vaccines and boosters north of the border.

Notably though, Northern Ireland and Wales - which adopted much the same restrictions as Scotland on events, nightclubs, and hospitality - have also ended up with virus rates of one in 20.

So, perhaps the restrictions - on top of behaviour changes and vaccines - were the thing that slowed the virus in the rest of the UK compared to England.

The harder question is whether they are "proportionate": is the risk from the virus and the benefit of the restrictions still enough to balance out their harms to the economy and mental health? Arguably, isolation policies are now harming the NHS as much as the demands of dealing with sick Covid patients.

The benefit-to-harm judgments have never been more polarised.

It would be interesting to see how they all compare if London was taken out of the mix. Covid that is, not in general. Mind you.....:)

Daily data:

Cases 81,713 (146,390 last Saturday)
Deaths 287 (313)
People vaccinated up to and including 14 January 2022:
First dose: 52,071,960
Second dose: 47,866,176
Booster: 36,295,768

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now down 32.8% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is up 45.0%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 263.3 today. As usual the Welsh are the Saturday party poopers (not reporting data today). That accounts for about 3k of the large drop in cases. England has dropped by 13k and Scotland accounts for most of the rest. The fall in cases has accelerated in each of the last few days. That will not continue and the reductions will soon be less dramatic.

My daughter arrived Thursday and took her Day 2 test immediately and was negative. Contacted today by T and T and told to test for 7 days. We assume that means someone on LAX-LHR had a positive Day 2 test, but does it mean someone near her, or anywhere on the plane? Because I have to assume on a plane that large with current rates there would be more than one positive.

Whole plane because there are no longer seat numbers on the PLF

You do put down cabin now I believe so it may just be same cabin.

Thanks, yeah, the plane was quite full. She talked to lots of other students sitting near her, so I am sure there was more than one positive. She had an N95 on door to door except for brief food/drink breaks, so not really worried.

Based on some very limited recent flight data (mostly USA-TPE), as many as 5-10% of passengers on any flight that requires pre-flight PCR testing may actually be infected (and missed by the pre-flight PCR), and this number may arguably be double or triple for flights that do not require any pre-flight testing.

The UK inbound international flights only require a pre-flight rapid test, so I would guesstimate that at least 10% on board are infected during peak Omicron times.

What do the UK data show for pre-flight testing and day 2 testing? What is the percentage of positives on day 2 testing?

The UK testing data is available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collec...weekly-reports

That links to a weekly report, the most recent of which is this spreadsheet (ODS format):

https://assets.publishing.service.go...ut-week-84.ods

Table 20b in that shows the total positive tests for the week 30 Dec to 05 Jan to be 24,919 out of a total number of tests of 395,325. This includes day 8 tests too. That is 6.3%. The table still shows tests against red list arrivals for that week. I do not know what is going on there!

The stats on Day 2 (and Day 5 and day 8) are gathered by Test and Trace and published here.
For the last quarter of 2021, 1.6% of Day 2 tests were positive, so considerably less than your estimates over a long period. HOwever, there has been a very substantial increase from mid-December onwards, culminating at 6.3% in the first week of January.

Yes, I am really scratching my head with these stats, not least because if you add all the day2 +day 5+day8 tests for both reds and non-reds you end up with less than 1/2 (9908) of the total number (24916). Moreover, a substantial proportion of that number consists of Day 2 LFTs, whereas we we still within the period when day 2 LFTs were not allowed.

Yes, the increase seems to be Omicron related as it is peaking/has just peaked in much of the world and should be similar for first 2-3 weeks of January...My estimate was for peak Omicron.

I got my PCR results earlier. Negative as I suspected. At this stage, I would’ve preferred it if I was positive and get done with it at least for a little while :)

Now I just need to try and dodge this virus for a little longer, ahead of our trip.

Interesting fact that might be just a coincidence. I I collected my sample at 3 pm and I received the result at 6 pm. My partner at 5 pm with results at 8 pm. Are sample processed in order of collection?

No, the labs i've seen just push through each batch of packages roughly in the order they are received. The Royal Mail and other couriers deliver whole lorry loads of tests in large sacks and they just get processed as quickly as they can be. It would have been possible for your partner's results to be back before your results, in many circumstances.