The encouraging thing is that early, suggestive, evidence from Israel is that the vaccine is causing a very substantial fall in cases of those fully vaccinated - in fact pretty well on the 95% mark. The problem is that this is for those who have had two doses in the proscribed timetable. Israel isn't doing the half vaccination experiment that we are so there are no figures, but suggestive numbers are that the single dose is either a) less effective than people believed or b) is taking longer to become effective. But as HMG's strategy is untested, it's difficult to guess what will happen.

Now this got me curious. Sure enough, final headline figures are as you state above. However:

Scotland: https://www.gov.scot/publications/co...-for-scotland/
England (you can download a spreadsheet): https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistic...-daily-deaths/
Wales: I don't see a similar source, but both Wales Online and BBC report 8.
Northern Ireland: I don't see information for today, but generally in the 10s.

So, something isn't adding up. If we assume that what doesn't add up this week also did not add up one week ago then yes, we can probably extrapolate you are correct in saying deaths are not falling.

Edit: Did just that on the England data and sure enough very similar to last week.

Chris Whitty made the observation in the Number 10 briefing today that although the daily case numbers from tests are falling, the ONS survey (the one where Imperial College do random samples of the population for the virus, ) is not seeing such a quick fall in infection rates, which indicates there is still a quantity of people with the virus who either don't realise they are infected and hence do not present themselves for a test (most likely) or do realise they are infected and don't bother to get a test (they would probably refuse to do the random sample test as well?). The scientists often cite the ONS figures as being more relevant as they paint a true picture of the level of infection across the country.

Chris also made the point that although he doesn't want to make predictions, they expect the level of deaths to be broadly flat for the next couple of weeks and then decrease slowly, much more slowly than in the spring.

Interestingly nothing on hotel quarantine - I guess we will have to wait till tomorrow.

Correct. As noted on the thread relating to UK self isolation and entry requirements the announcement is due tomorrow.

This thread is really just for domestic lockdown rules within the UK, so for self isolation or the new hotel quarantine you are better off keeping an eye on that thread instead.

The reason is that you are comparing two different data channels. The figures released by each nation typically early afternoon is the new mortalities as accumulated since the last notification. Some of these deaths could have happened weeks previously, but in some cases a post-mortem was underway. But dates of death get combined into these figures

The figures released by the PHE on the Staging webpage at 16:00 hrs are counteed by a different method, namely all new deaths with a date report of today - date of the report, not date of death..

If you look here, and look at the data tabs for the different tables, it shoud be a bit clearer. Today's 1.631 figure comes from the "date reported" table.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

Over time the numbers should more-or-less add up to the same. From the internal data, the death rate will continue to rise for a few more days (yesterday was the highest figure on mechanical beds, today only slightly fewer), plateau for a few days, and decline in a week or so.

While naturally deaths is the metric everyone is looking at, ppl dying now were likely infected during the Christmas/ new year period or just after. Their main concern seems to be not wanting to lift lockdown while cases are still high, the call will be very tight as cases go down and immunity goes up from natural infections combined with vaccines.

feb 15 is actually not that far away now

I've been pleasantly surprised by the amount of new cases in the last 2 days hadn't expected low 20,000's yet. If we get to 10000-15000 a day by 15th February it will hard to justify continuing with such harsh restrictions.

what do you think the total number of hospital patients would have to fall to in order to justify easing restrictions?

No idea but they will fall in due course with a 2-4 week lag.

They need to really fall. Although the NHS is 'open for business' the reality is that the staff are shattered and as soon as they can they all need some time to recover. With us all being at home there's the benefit that we're not going out and about and minimising the incidence accidents and other mishaps. Whilst the NHS would absolutely do it's best for anyone presenting with any urgent illness their capability to offer a normal service over the next couple of months will be limited.

Vaccine numbers still down today. Only 280k administered today. We need to be about the 400k mark to hit that 15 million target by mid Feb. I think hitting that target, along with falling deaths and hospitalizations is crucial to any easing of lockdown.

If you look at the trends, Monday and Tuesday numbers always the lowest by far. Remember, the 280k is not from today, it's from yesterday. So Sunday is clearly the slowest day to administer, and Monday because deliveries on Sunday are slower for the day ahead. Snow did not help things, I am sure many ppl cancelled appointments. Don't want frail people falling on snow/ice. The target of 15,000,000 will easily be reached, the politicians just don't want to over promise at this stage, and they want people to stay home, so the doom and gloom will be as high as possible until they suddenly change tone and say we are amazing at vaccinating, look at everything falling down, we are heroes and you will get your lives back now because you behaved well in this 'national effort' (Matt Hancock's favourite phrase that he uses about every 30 seconds he speaks).

The NHS has not been overwhelmed once this entire time. Just strained, they have remarkable resilience and capacity to deal with these things. It's all trending down, so the delay of opening is not because the NHS is full, but because they don't want cases to spike once measures are released and risk falling into a strained situation again with capcity.

January is always the worst month for the NHS, and they survived. Good job NHS. Things will only improve from here, but again its a political decision how fast to open.

It’s not even 15m shots given though is it? It’s 15m people offered a slot before the deadline, and no doubt 1-2m won’t take them.

In saying that, I wouldn’t be surprised if more people are getting them than allowed. My friend (works in a vulnerable kids home) and his family (foster a 10 year old with mental difficulties) have all applied for the vaccine and been offered dates, and from what I read none of those jobs should qualify yet