Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

@FMMM1
I think Germany is building up up to more than 38.000. (I think 24.000 might have been the first build up). Currently there are some patients from Italy and France in Germany, I don´t know about other countries. German hospitals are waiting for the catastrophe, and have minimized other treatments. Problem might become easily the supply with masks asf. also for dentists asf.

I really hope that this will turn out to be not this bad as it might become. Does not look so today.

 

One thing, the testing which is required is antigen/PCR testing (not antibody/serology/blood testing --). That seems to have been the game changer in Veneto --- testing at home, quarantine at home, provide community support (groceries etc. delivered). It seems ridiculous to ask but is that the testing (antigen/PCR) the UK Government is talking about?

Also, are we talking testing on the scale delivered in Germany? The population of the UK is about 80% of Germany; so for the UK that would be about 400K tests/week. Germany reckons it needs more testing!

If the UK delivers the strategy Anthony Costello then that will save lives and should help to get pet people back to a slightly more normal existence [https://www.theguardian.com/comment...herd-immunity-community-surveillance-covid-19].

What about the devolved administrations e.g. Northern Ireland?

I know you can't give answers but thanks for the info regarding BBC announcement.

 

@spinoza577
Keep in mind though the lack of staff.

Maybe it would make more sense to send the ventilators to other countries if not needed.

Or find a way for manufacturers to distribute them to the countries most in need.

It's sad that so little came from the EU officials. No shared plan/strategy or anything.

 

I'm interested to know what the consensus is about airborne transmission... I read the WHO saying on their site that there isn't evidence of airborne transmission, but for example today, it's warm & windy - surely if there are people shouting/singing/coughing in their back gardens 5/5-20 yrds away from my windows some of that can be blown in before it dies. I don't really understand the difference between something being airborne & vapour from people's exhalations... I mean what's the difference? What am I missing I know there will be something?

 

They’ve said they will test 100,000 a day, by the end of April. But then they started backtracking on that the next day - saying it was only a goal, and also that the 100,000 number included PCR as well as antibody tests. So yeah..there’s not much clarity really as to how many PCR tests exactly. It’s hard to get proper answers out of the UK govt’s spokespeople or even the scientific advisers. I think they still are really interested in the antibody tests but from what Neil Ferguson says above, it also seems to have struck them that tests + tracing and community surveillance is very important, (that must mean PCR because you can’t really trace after doing antibody tests), so we can hope..

At the moment we are at about 10,000 PCR tests a day.

I think the numbers they are quoting also include Northern Ireland and Scotland

And now I just read this.. which is making me feel worried about the situation.. PHE being a roadblock to testing https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-offer-of-400000-covid-19-testing-kits-a-week
I do think (hope) they’ll get there eventually.

 

Does anyone know where in the WHO guidelines it says that those recovering from Covid-19 should continue to self-isolate for at least 14 days after symptoms disappear? I’ve seen this quoted on Twitter but I can’t find the source of it on the WHO website. Also, can anyone outside the UK share what their government is recommending for this self-isolation period? I’m interested to know if other countries are ignoring the WHO advice on this or if it’s just the UK. Many thanks

 

It should help prison staff as it means that they have less people to supervise, and hopefully more room to help with quickly isolating people who may have been exposed. Our prisons are already over crowded and under staffed, so anything to release the pressure should help a bit. Releasing people who have nowhere to go would present new challenges elsewhere, but they could assess that before they decide who to prioritise for release. There are lots of details that need to be got right, and I'm not saying we should have faith that they will get them right, but in principle I wouldn't say that the policy is crazy.

 

I haven’t looked at WHO however just came across this thread, people are talking about what their countries are doing here:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1246816104921673729

 

14 days in Canada:

https://www.canada.ca/en/public-hea...l-coronavirus-infection/prevention-risks.html

 

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/self-isolation-advice/

 

This morning I was thinking the UK was going to let go of the herd immunity strategy because of the article I posted above.
Then I just read this

“Graham Medley, an expert in the spread of infectious diseases, suggested the government had “painted itself into a corner” by imposing widespread restrictions on movement that he claims may cause more damage than the epidemic itself.

He argued that the UK may still have to reconsider the herd immunity strategy to “allow people to catch the virus in the least deadly way possible”, the newspaper claimed.“

I don’t know who Graham Medley is. First time I’ve heard of him but it says he’s one of the key advisers? It says he’s at LSHTM

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...own-boris-johnson-graham-medley-a9447021.html
Coronavirus: Boris Johnson urged to reconsider lockdown strategy by virus adviser

 

If I could draw cartoons I'd do one with a game of table tennis underway [fill in your own players as you wish!] and a ball labelled "Covid-19 strategy".

 

How is sacrificing the elderly the least deadly way of catching the virus? (Assuming that is a direct quote of Medley's and not a journalistic misquote). [My bold]

 

@Barry It looks like this is the original newspaper article which the Independent is talking about. From the Times:

“Britain has “painted itself into a corner” with no clear exit strategy from the coronavirus epidemic and needs to reconsider herd immunity, according to a senior government adviser.

A prolonged lockdown risks causing more suffering than the virus itself, Graham Medley, the government’s chief pandemic modeller, has warned. He said that the country needed to face the trade-off between harming the young versus the old.”

I can’t read much of the rest of the article as I am not a subscriber to the Times.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...ser-calls-for-a-way-out-of-lockdown-rd58g6tc9
Boris Johnson’s coronavirus adviser calls for a way out of lockdown
Britain may still need to adopt herd immunity

 

I am just watching A Man and Two Guvners on iPlayer.

It seems remarkably similar to the way the situation is developing on Covid19 in the UK.

I am reasonably confident that Matt Hancock has realised what a mess everything is in and that a few people who know what they are talking about may get heard fairly soon.

I doubt Graham Medley will have any influence. But people who want to push that line will bat it about much in the way that it has been batted about in another bigger place.

 

Strange, this recurring theme of bats ...

 

There's an interesting set of modeled projection curves for all 50 US States individually, and for the country as a whole, here: https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections

To see individual states, click on the "United States of America" tab at the top of the screen.

The models are produced by The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent global health research center at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

 

Good news from Australia.

https://www.health.gov.au/sites/def...cases-in-australia-by-notification-date_4.png