STATISTICS
as per 15 th October 2021of LOCKDOWN UK
Total Virus Tests (daily) 873,498 Positive tests (daily) 42,776 Mortalities: 161,798 UK Deaths (daily) 136 People vaccinated- 1st dose 49,252,939 (as of 13 October 2021) - 2nd dose 45,239,759 Worcestershire cases 63,601 Worcestershire deaths 857 Wyre Forest cases 10,917 Worcester City cases 11,106 Wolverhampton cases 39,518 Sandwell cases 53,082 Dudley cases 45,090 Birmingham cases 164,786 The Acute Hospital Trust covers Worcestershire Royal Hospital, Evesham Community Hospital as well as the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch and Kidderminster Hospital.
DAY
565
‘Get the Point ?’
1.
The teenage booster, also known as
the 3-in-1 or the Td/IPV vaccine,
is given to boost protection against 3
separate diseases:
tetanus, diphtheria and polio.
It's a single injection given into the
muscle of the upper arm.
2.
This autumn all young people under 17
years of age have been offered a first
dose of Covid vaccine, starting with
those aged 12 to 15 years.
Those living with someone who is
immuno-suppressed have been offered
2 doses of the vaccine.
A member of the Government's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has warned that ..
“Forcing NHS staff to get the Covid vaccine would be an "admission of failure".
This
comes
at
the
start
of
the
Government’s
six-week
consultation
on
plans
to
make
Covid-19
and
flu
vaccinations
mandatory for front-line health and care staff.
Some hospitals seeing uptake among staff hovering just over 50 per cent.
“Forcing vaccines into the arms of doctors and nurses is not the answer .. .. it could even add to the anti-
vaccine sentiment,“
said
Professor Adam Finn
The
strength
of
the
Anti-Vax
movement
can
be
judged
by
warnings
from
the
Italian
police
that
anti-vaccine
campaigners
called
for
armed
attacks
during
planned
protests
this
weekend.
Eight
people,
who
call
themselves
"the
warriors"
on
the
Telegram
messaging
app.
are
being
investigated
by
police
for
incitement
to
crime
and
searches
have
been
carried
out
in six provinces.
On
the
other
hand,
in
a
typically
French
reaction
to
the
Covid
controversy,
the
Moulin
Rouge
night-spot
is
re-opening,
following 18 months of closure … as this snap-shot of their (un)dress rehearsal shows ..
Let’s Try Some ‘Crystal-Ball’ Gazing ?
We can do no worse that ‘SAGE’
Why has modelling so overestimated the key metric of hospitalisations ? September has not been a good month for the modellers of ‘SAGE’ with predictions hastened forward to “coincide” with the Prime Minister announcing his winter plan recently. “Pressure on the NHS would continue to build, with hospitalisations likely to top 7,000 admissions a day by mid-October! they say. In fact, for a second month running, Sars-Cov-2 has confounded the modellers, and hospital admissions never really took off in September, bumping along a plateau of around 600 a day. In recent days, they have started falling. “Essentially flat since July 19 although a hint of a downward trend more recently” , conceded Graham Medley, professor of infectious disease modelling and chair of SPI-M, in a social media update last week. “Long may it continue”. Nevertheless, it is worth considering what they admit are “neither forecasts nor predictions” .. why don’t things go according to plan ? It is largely human behaviour that keeps catching the modellers out, making assumptions about what we might do and how many “contacts” between us that entails, but if we fail to behave as expected the projections are badly thrown out. When the Prime Minister announced Freedom Day in mid July, assumptions were made about the speed at which people would return to their pre-pandemic levels of mixing and the models appear to have overestimated our rush for freedom. “The overall reported contact rate for adults is similar to levels seen over the last month” , says the latest iteration of the Government’s CoMix survey, which tracks the nation’s behaviour. Then there’s the link between cases and hospitalisations . In recent weeks hospitalisations have been coming down even as cases have climbed; called the “lag effect”. “Cases have risen predominantly in younger (school-age) groups, which don't impact directly on the hospitalisation stats to any great extent. And while there has been some spread into parent age-groups, to date this has been limited in size and scope.” Independent Modeller James Ward – a man with a better track record than most – recently updated his projections for the winter months and it seems likely that hospitalisations will continue to bounce around their current levels before dipping ahead of Christmas and then rebounding in the spring to around 1,000 a day as the impact of vaccines fade. If jabs wane more slowly, the predicted spring resurgence is kept lower; but, if mixing returns more quickly to its pre-pandemic norm, hospitalisations spike at almost 2,000 a day after Christmas. “There’s still a small risk we get a big peak – most likely in the First Quarter of 2022 – that would have us reaching for the Government's ‘Plan B’ of mild restrictions . But my best bet is that won’t be necessary”.
