Friday, the 17th of April, 2020
This evening's press briefing was run by the Business Secretary, Alok Sharma, Sir Patrick Valance, the UK Chief Scientific Advisor, and Yvonne Doyle, Medical Director of Public Health England. The numbers for the UK today show that 438,991 people have been tested for Covid, with 21,328 being tested yesterday. 108,692 have now tested positive for the virus, and increase of 5,599 cases. A total of 18,978 people have been hospitalized with the virus. Of those 18+ thousand in hospital, 14,576 have died. This is an increase of 847 people in the past 24 hours. In Cheshire, there have been 72 Covid-related deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital (an increase of 5), and 238 deaths in Cheshire. The lockdown measures were reviewed, with the five criterion that need to be met before restrictions begin to be lifted. The government has extended the UK worker furlough to the end of June (had been until the end of May). This is the financial support package allowing companies to keep employees employed, and paying 80% of their salary, up to 2,500 pounds. Also announced is a new vaccine task force that has been launched, combining research and work done in the government, academia, and industry to accelerate the development of a vaccine, including the testing and trials. Another prong for treatment of the virus until we have an antibody test (to determine if you've HAD the virus), is treatment of the virus, until the vaccine is fully developed, called therapeutic treatment. There is much talk that some anti-malarial medications could work in this function. 5,500 people are currently in clinical trials for various therapeutic treatments. The government has also put money into ?SEPI?, which is an international organization also focused on developing a vaccine. The race is on.
The goal of testing is to have 100,000 tests performed daily by the end of the month. Yesterday, 21,328 people were tested. The briefing panel reports that they have the capacity to test more. It's unclear to me why more are not being tested then. There currently are two "super labs" for developing/running the tests, with a third super lab to be online shortly.
The positive news for today is that in the community, the number of cases is decreasing; the r value is less than 1. In hospitals, the number of cases seems to have plateaued, or even decreased. Rate of infection in care homes needs a bit more attention. This month (from the first of April through the 16th of April), 74 patients have been treated for the virus, recovered, and discharged in Chester.
There are also reports that people should not book their summer holidays just yet. We've had our plane tickets to the US for this summer booked for awhile already, but we may not be going anywhere on an airplane this summer. There are also some reports that some parts of the lockdown could last much longer-possibly until 2022. It's not for certain, but speculation is for some people to continue to work from home, or restricting the numbers of people who travel during peak rush hours, and possibly the use of facemasks.
Captain Tom is still doing laps in his garden. He has now raised more than 20 million pounds!!
I did our weekly grocery shop today. An Aldi employee was at the door, as gatekeeper. It seemed there were more people inside the store than there has been in recent weeks. Perhaps they are trying to keep the queues down?? I queued for 15-20 minutes. There were queues at the tills, which spilled into the aisles, where workers were trying to stock the shelves. Because there were people standing in the aisles, queuing for the tills, they couldn't re-stock the shelves. Could've used a bit less people in the store at a time. The aisles were also "one-way", with arrows on the floor indicating the direction. Vehicular traffic when I was traveling both to and from the grocery store was heavier than it has been in recent weeks.
No other news to report for today.
No comments:
Post a Comment