No Aprils Fool... Northern Ireland lockdown extended to 1st April 2021.
But youngest school children aged 4 to 7 will start returning from 8th March and children doing GCSEs, AS and A-Levels returning from 22nd March.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-56101041

and in the context of travel and holidays

You could well argue hes moving the goalposts for international travel to every adult being offered 2nd jab, and social distancing until after a booster, plus maybe the winter.

Gibraltar seems to have plummeted down to 1-2 cases a day from 150 having vaccinated 3/4 of the population, and Israel's numbers are coming down fast. Looking forward to seeing if that happens here.

We might be starting to see death rates coming down faster than case rates though I’ll take today’s Worldometers figures as an anomaly for now. If the vaccines achieve the bottom line in terms of deaths and hospitalisations then the pressure open up the economy will be considerable. I’m on the fence right now, hoping for better news but, perhaps irrationally, not at all comfortable with the case rate figures ( trend wise).

The drop in cases does seem to have stalled the last couple of days (although two days is nothing), but 3weeks+5days rule means only just above 10% of the UK population is covered (in terms of cases of infection) by the first dose right now, and that’s going to go up 5% a week..

The trend is going down quickly, more quickly that the first and second wave, but the thing to remember is to look at it in relative terms, not absolute numbers. A 25% reduction of 650 is a lot more impressive than a 25% reduction of yesterday's 126 (7 day figure).

Yesterday's 7 day was 126 per 100k, the 14 day was 285, and that gives 7 days a 44% ratio over 14 days. Anything below 50% means cases are falling, and though we've had a lot of 41%, 44% is still pretty fast. A week ago it was 159 for 7 days and 382 for 14 days.

This is, of course, so important to understand. But we also have to remember that the death rate is the most trailing of all the trailing indicators. Infection rate and 111 triage rates come first. Generally hospital admissions come two weeks later and deaths come a further two weeks later. Fortunately, the first two are falling very fast still, and so we should expect that others to keep falling for at least two weeks and four weeks respectively - and the vaccine effect is only now beginning to show in the infection rates, so that will also start to flow through to hospitalisation and deaths over the coming months.

We're not out of the woods yet, but I sense that we are nearing the edge of them. Interested to read that even Neil Ferguson (aka Dr Gloom) is sounding very optimistic.

I was fortunate to have my first jab today. Some random learnings:

- Pfizer supply for our local centre is running out and they are expecting AZ only for the next few weeks.
- The centre is very well organised indeed but in my view heavily overstaffed.
- Either many people were not turning up for their appointments or the doctors administering the jabs had empty days. For my 20 minutes, the doctor I had saw 3 people (including myself), one other room saw one person and one room saw nobody. There were three further rooms out of sight so can't speak to them.
- My wife who, despite being in the same group as me, could not piggy back on my jab. The doctors and all the medical staff wanted to do it, but the administrators (there were four of them in the office) were adamant that it was not possible. Clearly this was not true as it was obvious that many had got past this roadblock, but she's not pushy enough.
- There were at least 19 medical and volunteer staff present, and they said they had capacity for 480 per day but weren't running at capacity.
- All the vaccination rooms had one doctor and one assistant present - the assistant administered the vaccine and the doctor asked the questions. It wasn't clear to me why you needed both.

I conclude from all this that, along with so much of what the NHS organises, there's huge admin back up, huge focus on measurable metrics and little to no attention paid to individual patients. That's not to say that I'm unhappy, but it's simply an observation. Most of my family are in the USA and have also been vaccinated by now (both jabs!) and the process is so different but the outcome, eventually, is similar.

As I always like to say about the NHS, absolutely fantastic at sticking plasters on - but for goodness sake don't let them organise anything! :) Well I did until I saw they signed some deal with Arthur Anderson, Capita, and IBM, what could possibly go wrong!

Lest anyone has a fit, they all deserve medals....just so we're clear! :)

As always with the NHS, the medical staff all need medals and are true heroes - I know that I could never do anything similar. And the volunteers were great- courteous, efficient and charming. But the clipboard carriers and hangers-on - well, best just to say that the adjectives I've used so far don't spring to mind.

Ha, well in 20 minutes today I would expect to vaccinate between 11 and 13 people, if Pfizer, and maybe a couple more if AstraZeneca. We are doing 1100 a day if Pfizer (ie one carton) and somewhat more if AZ. If it was GP led then it's actually a private operation, I'm in a GP led centre and we would do thousands more if we could have the vaccine. We are seeing a bit more BAME that last week, thankfully. Average DOB about 1960 I would say.

While I'm here, today's cases are 7 day at 122.0 and 14 days would be 275.1, both per 100,000, compared to 126.7 and 285.7 yesterday respectively.

Could the Wales lockdown easing be a clue for England's? Same dates or later as our schools returning later? Good if our shops and hairdressers open on 15th March.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...en-EASTER.html

The FT’s write up of the direction of travel describes a move from strict rules with legal backing and heavy fines to a system of encouragement and compliance. I’m trying to square that with many reports saying that foreign holidays this summer are still at risk. I’m curious if there is a middle ground that we will end up in like we were last June where non-essential cross border travel is not legally banned but the FCO advise is against all essential travel meaning that package holidays, etc. wouldn’t proceed and travel insurance will be nearly impossible to come by. That plus quarantine requirements, red list risk, and the 210 GBP testing requirement would probably put a damper on 90%+ of foreign holidays while not formally restricting freedom or requiring people who have other reasons for travel to try and pigeon hole it in “essential.” Any thoughts?

I think they will be much less lenient on travel. There is genuine concern about importing more variants or mutations that might undermine the success of the vaccination programme so I can see barriers and obstacles to all but the most determined for quite some time.

European countries that have large tourism industries might be keen for a corridor but I can only see that happening if they have significantly advanced vaccination programmes AND no mutations circulating that aren’t present in the U.K.

I guess that’s my point though - guidance against non-essential travel plus self-isolation requirements on return plus red list risk plus 210 GBP/person for testing (not including outbound testing requirements) - already is going to represent barriers and obstacles to all but the most determined. Obviously shads of degrees. It’s just a thought of where we could be heading given the reporting.

Matches my experience with our GP practice. Clinical staff fine; administratively a basket case (and far, far worse since the one who patients refer to as "the **** up fairy" arrived back from her maternity leave).