Coronavirus - general, non tennis related

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Coronavirus - general, non tennis related

indiana · Tennis legend

Coup Droit wrote:
The US trial results for Astrazeneca were published - makes excellent reading - in terms of efficacy, age effectiveness, side-effects in general, thrombotic side-effects in particular - all good ! Best news of the day.

Tons of links out there but:

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/astrazenca-covid-vaccine-coronavirus-safe-b1820374.html

Very good to read and hopefully the effectiveness against severe illness and death will increasingly show through in the UK hospitalalisation and death figures ( deaths dropped further from 1082 to 683 last week), particularly with our high vaccine rate already accounting for these seen as at most risk.

May this get further coverage on the continent where so many figures are currently going the wrong way.

paulisi · Tennis legend

Numbers still plateauing in 5k-6k.
There seems a wave of persistent high numbers from East Manchester through to West and South Yorkshire and into Hull.

Expect Friday's R rate to be close to 1

indiana · Tennis legend

indiana wrote:
Although the UK new case numbers continue to look relatively better than most of Europe they have indeed certainly been coming down slower over the last 2 weeks.

13/02 - 19/02 : new cases 81471, deaths 3633
20/02 - 26/02 : new cases 67816, deaths 2495
27/02 - 05/03 : new cases 44219, deaths 1674
06/03 - 12/03 : new cases 40983, deaths 1082
13/03 - 19/03 : new cases 37398, deaths 683

The lag hospitalisation and death figures have continued to consistently push downwards but will the easing in the new case falls begin to show signigicantly in these figures too, or will improved treatments and the vaccine mean continued big improvements in these stats too, with the new case figures perhaps more weighted to a younger less at risk group? An important few weeks coming up.

Scotland has a particular new case problem in that while there too the hospital and death figures have continued to significantly fall for now, their new cases numbers have actually increased over each of the last 2 weeks.

I think we have to be looking at schools regarding this and I believe Scotland was ahead of the rest of the UK with pupils return. Not saying the rewards there don't outweigh the risks but it has to be factored in as an issue. A clear advantage of a step by step easing of restrictions is that you can more pinpoint problem areas.

New cases last week : UK as a whole - about 55 per 100,000. Scotland about 75 per 100,000.

Total new cases in the UK rose in many areas in the last week to Friday and slightly overall. Hospital and death figures continue to significantly fall.

20/03 - 26/03 : new cases 38781, deaths 489

So again a balance will need to be taken as restrictions are relaxed that yes, new cases aren't particularly dropping but it does indeed look like that, with the vaccine roll out and a different age distribution of new cases, serious effects are becoming overall much less and we are moving to more acceptable risk, allowing hopefully continually more reopening of the economy and people's lives becoming much more normal.

As the vaccine rolls on to younger age groups the new case figures should in time drop too. In the short term though the vaccine roll out and covid restriction relaxations will likely have counter influences on the number of new cases.

paulisi · Tennis legend

Central Europe is a mess. French cases are getting significantly worse and my sister in law is not due back from France until Wed.
She is watching the news with an eye on jumping on the next Eurostar if necessary in fear of a red listing.

indiana · Tennis legend

Apparently EU countries have relatively big so far unused stockpiles of the vaccines they actually have already received from AstraZenica. This is reported to be largely because of people's reluctance to receive that particular vaccine, err largely fuelled by extremely debatable doubts expressed by EU leaders who have also been threatening AstaZeneca re lack of delivery ( not sure if some are the same EU leaders! )

Shambles.

Elegant Point · Satellite level

France will widen strict lockdown restrictions - which have already been in place in several areas including Paris - to the whole country to combat a third wave of coronavirus sweeping Europe.

Watched the news in disbelief as an older woman in hospital with C-19 in France, told reporters how she had refused the AZ vaccine prior to catching C-19 and although being hospitalised she would still refuse the AZ vaccine.

Distrust, scaremongering, previous health scares and the French peoples distrust of politicians and big Pharma means the vaccine rollout in France has been woefully slow. Only ~ 40% of the countrys health workers have been vaccinated.

Macrons poor interpretation of the AZ vaccine data hasnt helped the situation, but sad to see such irrational views from a country which gave us Louis Pasteur and Rene Descartes.......

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

I was whatsapping a French friend yesterday in France, who's married to a doctor.

Her level of vitriol, and anger, and despair, and frustration, was off the scale - anger at Macron, the press, the people, I should say, and the failure of the roll-out system.

Mind you, English friends have felt the benefit.

One French GP is retiring in a couple of days. She's in an area with a lot of Brits and has been instrumental in running the local vaccination centre.
From what I gather, she basically 'nicked' a whole load of AZ vaccines to give to her patients as a sort of leaving present (anyone over 50, even healthy people, whereas the official cut-off is still 75 at the moment).
She called all her patients, and had an open day.
A friend who went said there were 26 people in the waiting room. 23 of these people were English !

emmsie69 · ATP level

Intresting statistic I found yesterday, apparently if we correlated the number of specific blood clot cases Germany has had in the AZ vaccine cohort to the UK cohort we should have seen 150 cases but we have only seen 5.

indiana · Tennis legend

After the reduced rate of fall in new cases then slight rise, there was a welcome fairly big drop in the UK reported new cases in the last week up to Friday - probably to a surprising extent with every day reporting under 5,000 and Friday 3,402. The last week's total of 29,203 represents 43 per 100,000 population.

The weekly death total continues to fall and has been more than halving every two weeks for a while. Down from 3633 to 301 in 6 weeks

UK reported new cases and deaths :

13/02 - 19/02 : 81471, 3633
20/02 - 26/02 : 67816, 2495
27/02 - 05/03 : 44219, 1674
06/03 - 12/03 : 40982, 1082
13/03 - 19/03 : 37398, 683
20/03 - 26/03 : 38781, 489
27/03 - 02/04 : 29203, 301

paulisi · Tennis legend

Lack of school kids getting testing is the drop

emmsie69 · ATP level

paulisi wrote:
Lack of school kids getting testing is the drop

They didn't break up until yesterday in my area.

Elegant Point · Satellite level

The impact of the C-19 pandemic has been devastating, but are there leanings we can take forward?

There has not been a single case of flu detected by PHE in the last 7 weeks - assumed to be due to C-19 restrictions (social distancing, mask wearing etc) and uptake in the flu vaccine. Admittedly, the flu virus has a natural R rate of 1.3-1.5, depending on the strain, in comparison, the basic R value for Covid-19, is estimated to be around 2.5-3.0.........So influenza is far less infectious and easily spread than coronavirus, but still kills ~99k-200k people each year. However there has been no flu pandemic anywhere in the world this year!

Obviously we would not want to repeat the lockdown conditions to prevent flu, but may worth considering working from home if you feel sick, wearing masks on public transport and having hand sanitizer available in shops in the flu season??

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports

IMO the government should be continuing to stress the importance of social distancing, mask wearing and hand sanitising as we come out of lockdown. The virus is not going to magically vanish in accordance with the government timetable!
Call me fussy, but I was the only person I saw sanitising hands and trolley either on the way in or the way out of the supermarket at the weekend......

paulisi · Tennis legend

Yes - I get the impression that people are becoming more lax.
I am involved in running a covid secure athletics track and we used to get a very high percentage using hand sanitizer. Now it is a very low percentage.

We may get another wave, just when and how severe it is would be guesswork.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Yes, it's sad that people don't see the point of carrying on with sanitiser etc.

I'm with you Elegant Point, if it's there, use it !!! (And carry your own little bottle too).

From a guy I spoke to yesterday:

Him: "I don't think I need to get a vaccine"

Me: "Why not?"

Him: "Well, I've got a really strong immune system, I mean, I haven't had a cold for over a year now"

You can see his logic - but I put him right