A door-to-door testing blitz is under way in what the health secretary calls a bid to find “every single case” of the South African variant in England.
Matt Hancock says 105 cases of the coronavirus variant have been found in the UK - 11 had no links to international travel.
On-the-spot doorstep tests, home testing kits and mobile testing units will be deployed to try to reach 80,000 people in eight specific areas.
[LIST]
[]Cases have risen sharply … :!:
[]Deaths have remained extremely high … :shock:
[]Hospitalisations have remained extremely high (as of 29/1) … :!:
[]Tests are meeting targets (as of 2/2) … :!:
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The ongoing success story:
People vaccinated up to and including 2 February 2021
[LIST]
[]Cases have risen slightly … :!:
[]Deaths have remained extremely high … :!:
[]Hospitalisations have remained extremely high (as of 31/1) … :!:
[]Tests have, apparently, exceeded capacity (as of 3/2) … :shock:
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No.
PCR testing capacity alone is 770,305.
As the chart states: “Virus tests include PCR tests conducted in laboratories and lateral flow device tests that give results in less than an hour, without needing to go to a laboratory.”
After at least a month of lockdown, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest positive tests are falling in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The UK’s reproduction or R number is estimated to be between 0.7 and 1.
In theory the R number represents how many extra people each infected person gives the virus to. But in reality, it is a calculation based on infections, hospitalisations and deaths, and is used to give a sense of whether the epidemic - including its tax on the health service - is broadly growing or shrinking.
Swab tests from people signed up to the Covid symptom app suggest cases are down 70% from their peak. But experts warn that infection levels still remain high.
An estimated one in 65 people in both England and Northern Ireland had the virus, one in 70 in Wales and one in 115 in Scotland.
The ONS’s data is slightly out of date - covering the week up to 30 January - so may not reflect the situation right now.
In theory the R number represents how many extra people each infected person gives the virus to. But in reality, it is a calculation based on infections, hospitalisations and deaths, and is used to give a sense of whether the epidemic - including its tax on the health service - is broadly growing or shrinking.
Aside from the ONS, other surveillance studies - where random samples of people are swabbed whether or not they have symptoms - also show cases coming down, starting somewhere around the second week of January.
Let’s hope that nobody or nothing comes along to reverse the fall …
[LIST]
[]Cases remain very high … :!:
[]Deaths have remained extremely high … :!:
[]Hospitalisations have remained extremely high (as of 1/2) … :!:
[]Tests remain very high … (as of 4/2) … :shock:
[/LIST]
[LIST]
[]Cases have fallen again … :!:
[]Deaths have remained very high … :!:
[]Hospitalisations have remained extremely high (as of 2/2) … :!:
[]Tests remain very high … (as of 4/2) … :!:
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More than 11 million people, or about one in five adults in the UK, have now received a first dose of a vaccine, government figures show, and more than 510,000 people have had a second.
Chart showing the vaccination programme is on course to reach 15m people by mid Feb
About 380,000 doses need to be given each day if the government is to reach its target of offering vaccines to the 15 million most vulnerable people by the middle of February.
[LIST]
[]Cases have fallen again … :!:
[]Deaths have fallen dramatically … :!:
[]Hospitalisations have remained extremely high (as of 3/2) … :!:
[]Tests remain very high … (as of 4/2) (not updated) … :!:
[/LIST]
[LIST]
[]Cases have fallen dramatically … :!:
[]Deaths have risen again … :!:
[]Hospitalisations have fallen noticeably (as of 5/2) … :!:
[]Tests have risen slightly (as of 8/2) … :!:
[/LIST]
[LIST]
[]Deaths remain high … :!:
[]Cases remain very high … :!:
[]Hospitalisations remain very high … :!:
[]Vaccinations remain very high … :!:
[/LIST]
The 4,000,000 (recorded) cases milestone has been passed - the real number of infected will be at least double that - entirely due to BJ’s shilly-shallying at the start of the pandemic followed by lockdown chaos and confusion exacerbated by an open-border policy with a test-and-trace program run by an incompetent …:shock:
inevitably, with that number of infections, the number of COVID deaths will soon reach 120,000 …
However, BJ has got his vaccination program together and, thanks to the NHS and thousands of volunteers, most of the UK population will, within months, be protected from the worst ravages of the virus … :!:
