to feel relieved because London could be virus free by the end of the month ??

[Italianmoma1983]

It should make us hopeful !! Lockdown will definitely be eased and life could go back a bit to normal !

Great news if it has dropped low in London but Central London at least has been virtually deserted over lockdown. I live just outside the M25 near another motorway that runs into London. I cross over it regularly on walks. It was really quiet during lockdown but this week has gone back to almost normal levels of traffic. I am concerned about the numbers of people who are all heading back into Central London to work.

Nah. Only huge restrictions like what they did in China with the QR codes and heavily enforced rules can make somewhere virus free that fast.

I’m out in Spain and the figures are starting to look much better, with exceptions of places like Madrid and Barcelona.

To me this is a more frightening phase. The fear is that people won’t have the self discipline to rein themselves in for a while longer and it will flare up again, especially when travel between provinces is reintroduced. People that - understandably, but wrongly - like you can’t wait to get fully back to normal. That way lies madness.

The damage a huge second spike would do to public morale as well as the economy would be awful. It’s great to see the figures are improving and be glad, but please be patient and take it slowly. 😊

What? Yeah. No... Since London isn't an island it is categorically totally and utterly not possible for anyone to state this!!

Do they mean virus free - which is bollocks without a strong vaccination program-

Or no new symptomatic cases? Which is slightly more possible.

However london is one of the worst places for public contact. There originally was a plan just to lockdown london which would have controlled the virus sufficiently. Except all the londoners would have buggered of out taking the problem elsewhere...

Sorry the link
www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-uk-antibody-tests-lockdown-deaths-cases/

@Bridecilla no need to be rude

bluebluezootwitter.com/ALBY_LAD/status/1260919220101054464?s=20

They have always said London was ahead of the curve so it would make sense ,although with people starting to go back to work I’m sure it won’t be for long sadly but I’m sure it’ll happen at some point,like SARS

London could be virus free by July and i could win the euromillions.

The papers can say whatever they want as long as they hedge - critical reading skills, people! Lets use a little bit of common sense, please.

Have they encased the city in a massive glass dome or something? It's a pandemic ffs. Nowhere can claim to be virus free unless they test and isolate their entire population and test/quarantine every single person coming in.

Not sure where they are getting that figure from. That is assuming that everyone with symptoms are now getting tested for them to come up with that figure. But there could be some truth to that. I think London was one of the first places to get it and it was burning through London before it was classed as a pandemic. I suppose we will only know for sure when the anti body tests come out so that they can start testing people to see who has had it already. If people have had it and are immune for a while then this will slow down new infections..... All this time people who have had to work have still been travelling through London via public transport before and after lockdown, so this would have caused people to keep getting infected. Eventually most people would have had it that travel through London daily. There will be another spike from people going back to work though.....I just imagine that the number of people that have actually had it already in London would be very high so at some point London's new infection rates will go down before the rest of country.

OP isn’t making it up. R is 0.4 in London and about 0.7 everywhere else.

However london is one of the worst places for public contact. There originally was a plan just to lockdown london which would have controlled the virus sufficiently. Except all the londoners would have buggered of out taking the problem elsewhere...
Not true , the numbers were higher in London ,yes but that would not have stopped this, just slowed it down

It does sounds positive OP and I don’t blame you for trying to see the good news.

London? No way.

It would be nice if it were true.
Unfortunately I don't think it is possible in such an over crowded city.
The number may reduce but it won't be gone, someone somewhere will believe they are untouched possible asymptotic while spreading it.

I was just reading this on the telegraph app. I think it’s encouraging.

Other countries who are a bit ahead have found that the infection rates came back up once they eased the lockdown (eg Japan and Germany), so I would take the newspapers' views with a massive pinch of salt. There is huge uncertainty whether having had the virus gives future immunity or not, and if it doesn't it means that it won't be in any way under control until there are vaccines available.

Hope for the best but expect the worst.

Can the person who said it was in The Guardian link to the article? I've had a thorough read this morning and can't find it.

Selfishly I feel relieved too OP as we live near London and DH (normally) works there. In this area we were the first into the epidemic, most hard hit, and we are first to see the light at the end of the tunnel. However, if this epidemic has shown us anything, it's that distances can be covered very quickly by a virus and that allowing people to move around freely spreads it very quickly indeed. So any relief if tempered by the fact that England is now coming out of lockdown. It won't take much for the R rate in London to get back up to where the north of England is now.

I read this too from various sources this morning.
While I agree that nowhere will ever be completely eradicated (until perhaps the majority have immunity one way or another), once the R rate reduces significantly, very few further cases should occur.
It's good to hold onto something positive and I am hoping this is the start of more good than bad news. We should start to be more optimistic!

Hmmmm seems unlikely it’ll be over that easily. Especially with immunity unknown etc

It’s like norovirus I think In terms of how easily it spreads albeit being respiratory but noro hangs around on surfaces and we all know how levels of that can go from nothing to a lot very very quickly, I think it’ll be like that or flu something nasty that spreads quickly and easily and is always around but with jumps in rates/outbreaks every so often. Will also end up like c diff and Mrsa as a problem in hospitals

SockYarn

I don't think anywhere will be "virus free" but it's certainly true that the number or people with it is declining fast, all over the country”

Well yes, because all over the country, huge numbers of people have stayed at home for 7 weeks.
They’re going out again now .....