Covid 19 - Lift all restrictions?

Infection rates are going up. Businesses can’t wait till the 14th to be ready for 21st. They need a decision to be made ASAP.

Whatever happens the government need the country to go with its decision
Many are not too happy at being under restrictions especially if the low hospital admissions and death rates continue

The rest of the world is very concerned about the UK coming out of lockdown, just as the Indian variant is taking hold and spreading. Which is why the UK is now on the red list for many countries, in EU and elsewhere.

I wonder if countries like Spain and Portugal will come to regret their decision to open doors to UK travellers.

No, it isn't a personal attack Alegrias1, but what we had last time was. I'll read your comments carefully. Thank you.

Pointing out inconsistencies and inaccurate assumptions in a scientist's findings is not personal attack, its discussion. So, here goes:

Concentrating on the assertion that the number of hospitalisations in Scotland is going up. The number of hospital patients in Glasgow has risen from a minimum of 58 at the beginning of May to 83 today. The maximum of 99 was reached on 23rd May and the total reduced by 15% yesterday. The maximum number of hospital patients with COVID at the peak of the latest wave was 2,053, so fluctuations in the levels at the moment are potentially not even statistically significant. There are 4 people in ICU in the whole country, that number has oscillated between 3 and 6 for the last 2 weeks.

9 of Scotland's Health Authorities have a total of 8 people in hospital with Covid; not 8 each, 8 total. A further 3 have fewer than 10 each, one has 11 and Glasgow has 44. Probably because it's the most populous area and also serves many of the surrounding areas.

Glasgow has been in lockdown of one form or another for 270 days. If restrictions are not eased soon, it is an admission that lockdown is not really working but there is no other alternative. Surge testing, a faster vaccination program and targeting those who have so far refused the vaccine is the way forward. (Which is happening, of course)

We know that you are 50% more likely to get Covid if you are in contact with this variant than you were under the Kent variant.
We don’t know that at all, there is evidence that the transmissibility is less than previously feared, and I gave the evidence for that in a previous post.

She felt we needed hard evidence that the next stage would not be as risky as it seems before going ahead with it on 21 June. Which is exactly what is going to happen – although hard evidence is going to be hard to come by. If we wait until everything is 100% confirmed, we’re going to be under restrictions for a very, very long time indeed.

FWIW, I believe that we should delay the next step in easing the lockdown. And when that decision is taken Prof Pagel will be able to say that they took her advice after all. Of course, I'm in Scotland so the 21st June has never been the "Day of Freedom" that has been promised in England, so there would be no backtracking required.

Sorry nanna8 - wrong thread! I have asked for it to be removed.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

I have never heard of this Prof but she sounds pretty knowledgeable to me. Thanks for that, PippaZ.

I know this is long but I hope you will find it useful.

Listening to Today this morning they were looking at the latest data on the variant first found in India (VFFI). The PM said yesterday both, that he didn't see any reason in the data for not sticking to 21 June in England, but also that we may need to wait. The VFFI does account for three-quarters of new cases. There is extra testing going on. Professor Christina Pagel is Director of the Clinical Operational Research Unit at UCL, which applies operational research, data analysis and mathematical modelling to problems in health care and a member of the Independent Sage Group. She noted that this variant is still doubling each week and that we have gone from two cases in the week of 20th March and now, two months later, it is the dominant variant here. This has happened under Step 2 of the road map. She felt we have every reason to be concerned about this variant spreading.

Acknowledging this is not replicated in the hospitalisation data she commented that we have certainly weakened the link between cases and hospitalisation data but we haven't broken it. She added that we have seen where cases have gone up significantly as in Bolton and now in Scotland the hospitalisations are going up. They are causing, not unbearable strain but they are certainly, as in Bolton they cause concern and they have announced that they are struggling. So it is not fine.

We now have fewer restrictions in England than we have had since the pandemic started. So, if enough people get infected, even a really small proportion who need hospitalisation can still end up being quite a large absolute numbers.

The surge testing in places like Bolton is contributing but we have seen it quite consistently growing, we have seen the proportions growing, we have seen it spreading in lots of different mediums and we haven't yet seen the impact from opening to Step 3 last week. We are about to have a half-term when there is a lot of travel within the UK. Professor Pagel thought the idea that everything is fine is not substantiated.

She felt we needed hard evidence that the next stage would not be as risky as it seems before going ahead with it on 21 June. Both Sage and PHE have been saying it is a more transmissible variant and has some levels of vaccine escape. Compared to two months ago we now have a dominant variant that will transmit faster and our vaccines are less effective against it particularly after one dose. Although we have really good one dose data coverage we don't have good two-dose coverage. So, looking at the fourth test "The assessment of the risks is not fundamentally changed by new variants of concern", is not met.

Professor Pagel said that what worries her, even more, is that we haven't changed our border policy and there is a new variant under investigation as of yesterday. This came from travellers from Thailand who had come from Egypt. Neither of those countries is on the Red List. We now have 100 cases. It also has concerning mutations.

New variants are coming up everywhere and this summer we need to protect our vaccination programme. There is no particular reason to think this is the last variant that is going to become dominant in the UK.

When asked if she thought remaining as we are now would be demoralising Professor Pagel said that she thought what would be demoralising would be having a third wave. She suggested that if we could just delay international travel, delay Step 4 of the Road Map until we have a much higher proportion of people vaccinated with two doses we would be in a much better position. We are only two months away from that; it's not long to wait. We would then be at a much lower risk of having to put in new restrictions.

Meanwhile, we could be doing things such as expanding the pilots supporting accommodation for isolation. We know that you are 50% more likely to get Covid if you are in contact with this variant than you were under the Kent variant so we know that things like providing different accommodation could be really helpful. Things like that would support breaking the chain of transmission.

Professor Pagel was then asked if there was a proportion of double vaccination that would make a difference. We are currently at 45%. She replied that looking at Israel, which is the only country that has managed to get effectively to zero covid through vaccination, no other country has managed to do that yet, they unlocked when they got to over 70% of adults vaccinated and they are now at 85% of adults vaccinated. They were very cautious; they still had masks indoors until very recently. They didn't open sports for a long time, they had very strict border controls but they seem to have got to a situation where new variants can't spread. That's why we can say that in a couple of months we should be there.

It would be really good if we don't have the personal attacks on this women we had the last time here name was mentioned. She does know, I would guess, a great deal more than any of us on here. It's also interesting to hear what other leaders in this field are saying.

Casdon

I’ve just seen that the highest infection rate in all areas of England is now amongst 10-19 year olds, and the weekly figures are up 20% from last week. Not looking too great for some of the hotspot areas.

The highest infection rate has been in the 10-19 group for some time. It's been played down because some people might have thought it's a bad idea for pupils to remove masks in schools.

Yes, the infection rate is increasing again. Hopefully, it's a blip, but only a fool would ignore the increase.

I’ve just seen that the highest infection rate in all areas of England is now amongst 10-19 year olds, and the weekly figures are up 20% from last week. Not looking too great for some of the hotspot areas.

DD is in Derbyshire. I guess, on balance, it makes more sense to reduce the time between vaccines. It seems that the AZ vaccines immune response gets better over time. Either way when I think back to a few months ago when all of my family were desperate for the vaccine I’m being petty by querying the gap between doses.

I thought they were only reducing the 12 weeks for the AZ vaccine in the areas where the Indian variant is prevalent MayBee? I know they aren’t bringing appointments forward in Wales at the moment, we were told by our government that they didn’t think it was necessary due to the low prevalence here at the moment.

They’re reducing the time between first and second doses of the AZ vaccine. However, on one of DrJohns blogs he pointed out that the AZ vaccine was more effective with a longer gap. We had an 11 week gap and I would have preferred to wait another week.

It seems to be a watching and waiting game to see if the link has been broken between infection numbers and hospital admissions and deaths
So far although infection has risen slightly across the UK the other two figures haven't Is the vaccine doing its job I know younger people have not been vaccinated but they are far less likely to be seriously ill or die

Around 40% of the UK population are now fully vaccinated, so we have a way to go yet to achieve what the experts say is the minimum to achieve a level of herd immunity, 60-70% seems to be the target- but every day the numbers are increasing.

nanna8

Back to square one here. Schools closed, restaurants, shops closed, one per family only can shop for food as from midnight tonight. The rest of the world eases,Victoria, Australia tightens up. Ah well, I suppose it’s better than the alternative.

I think Victoria’s situation is interesting (sorry) because despite all the external border controls, intermittent interior border controls along with strict quarantine policy Covid-19 still manages to escape into the community.

Japan was held up as a beacon on how to control the virus, one year on they have rising numbers and few vaccinated.

This pesky virus is here to stay in whatever variant, the human race has no choice but to live alongside it.

Vaccines are the only way to return to normalcy, and fortunately the UK is nearly at the ultimate number of vaccinated population (according to varying sources) to do so.

I think this has got way out of hand. We started with '3 weeks to flatten the curve'. We now have a crashed economy, 5million on the NHS waiting list for treatment and operations. Most importantly 'no money for anything! Get your two doses of the vaccination, yes. But then we back to normal.Carry on as normal. This is the only real option of going forward. If you think it is anything else then you are kidding yourself.

Back to square one here. Schools closed, restaurants, shops closed, one per family only can shop for food as from midnight tonight. The rest of the world eases,Victoria, Australia tightens up. Ah well, I suppose it’s better than the alternative.

Back to the OP.

The prospect of the final easing of lockdown restrictions in England going ahead precisely as planned on 21 June is close to nil, according to ministers and officials.
... ...
The ethical and political question for the Prime Minister would be whether to slow down or even reverse unlocking if the disease were on the rise but there was no significant risk of the NHS being overwhelmed. Ministers tell me that is the big question pre-occupying Boris Johnson.

Full easing of Covid restrictions on 21 June looks unlikely by Robert Peston (£)

GrannyGravy13

growstuff I know several Bangladeshi Families, the parents (50 and over) have not taken up being vaccinated. Is it a cultural thing? (only one of the wives speaks reasonably good English the others very very little)

It would be interesting to know the true reasons why, the older children (late teens & twenties) are eager to be vaccinated.

I haven't a clue.

The article I read was about the elimination of smallpox in the late 1970s.

growstuff I know several Bangladeshi Families, the parents (50 and over) have not taken up being vaccinated. Is it a cultural thing? (only one of the wives speaks reasonably good English the others very very little)

It would be interesting to know the true reasons why, the older children (late teens & twenties) are eager to be vaccinated.

Although I suspect it's people in their 30s/40s/50s who are getting infected this time (like my neighbours!) and it's the unknown of how serious this new variant may be.

Wixams isn't 'poor' it's a relatively new estate, a detached family home is 500 - 600k, a small 2 bed @ 200k +. Elstow isn't particularly deprived either imo they are suburbs. It seems to me though that mutli generational living was overlooked in March last year and here we are 15 months later and it hasn't been addressed again. If it is spreading in schools and then being passed into the wider community it still needs to be considered that these children/young adults 'may' live in multi generational households or mix with those that do too.

GrannyGravy13

Surely Growstuff when Bangladesh embarked on its mass smallpox vaccination programme the rest of the world was not vying for smallpox vaccines as is the case with the Covid-19 vaccines.

I agree, so are you saying that it's a shortage of vaccines causing some people not be vaccinated rather than a refusal by some? That's a different issue.

From reading about the situation in Bangladesh at the time, the biggest problem was overcoming vaccine reluctance by uneducated people living in rural communities.