Has the virus become less infectious over time?

[reeceormeese]

We never did get the VE Day spike. And lots of countries that were really badly hit loosened restrictions weeks ago and apart from slight increases, it hasn’t started growing again exponentially and even after these slight increases the cases then went down again.

Has the virus possibly mutated and become less virulent?

viruses normally weaken over time.No idea if this has happened with this one yet,hopefully it will.

My brain is really mushed by all the information.

I do worry we are seeing a slight uptick, but I think that has happened elsewhere before coming back down.

I really want to know how and who is spreading it, track and trace should help to see that. In my town we are getting about 5 new cases a week, so seems relatively controlled.

Part of me thinks this is becoming personal responsibility and risk assessment time. Just because lockdown is loosened doesn't mean you have to do it. But, for some people their risk assessment will mean they need to work / see people for their financial and emotional health.

If we all try and social distance, cover our faces, wash our hands, stay at home as much as we can then it will help.

Finding ways to get people to adhere to quarantining with symptoms is going to be a big deal, face masks should be mandatory when they know 50% of people aren't doing that.

Personally, as a woman in her 30's with zero risk factors this statistically will not kill me. We can't keep in full lockdown for something that isn't fatal in the majority of cases. We do need to try and keep it low to protect the vulnerable and the NHS, but I don't think the government are intending to get numbers much lower than they are now.

I think the whole VE Day thing has been massively overplayed. The vast majority of people abided by social distancing rules... And those that didn’t generally did so outside.

The virus isn’t weakening, we’re just generally not putting ourselves into situations where it can spread with anything like the same regularity that we were before the beginning of March.

If I remember back to the fortnight before we were advised to socially distance, I can count numerous occasions I would have been close to people indoors without a second thought, often for prolonged periods. A minority of people getting less than 2m away from each other outside on one day doesn’t get remotely close to how things were before mid-March.

Warm weather has nothing to do with it. Its 44c where I live and coronavirus is still here and spreading. Just to get this misconception out of the way.

Warm weather may well help, just not enough to stop it. Even if it halved the R from 3 to 1.5, it would still end up spreading pretty quickly.

I agree, 29th Feb I was at a party, hugged numerous people and was in a room with 100 people dancing and sweating. Even with lockdown being eased most of the things that we did before that were "spready" are now not happening. No dinner parties, most office workers at home, no parties, pubs, theatre etc. Supermarkets must have much lower footfall, I know a lot of people that haven't been in one for months and that must help.

We know symptoms and they are obvious at this time of year, we can get tested quickly, we are isolating mainly anyway so even if we did it should only spread within a family or small group.

Most of us are sanitising letter boxes and doorbells and washing our hands and not using shared spaces. All of those things will help. You just need to keep away from the idiots.

To be honest, I think a second spike, if it is inevitable, is best to happen whilst we are in the summer months and the NHS is not already under pressure from other winter illnesses etc.

I agree, but I think it’s much more likely in the autumn... If numbers continue to stabilise and reduce people will become more and more relaxed.... This, combined with people meeting more indoors as the nights draw in and temperatures drop, will provide a recipe for much more spreading. Hopefully numbers will be low enough by then for track and trace to be effective.

Warm weather at least gets people outside.The upturn will be when we have wet/cold weather and people thinking 6people in a room together is ok.

I think getting people panicked over VE day steeet gatherings was politically expedient, as is all the nonsense about staying 2m away from people passing by you in the street. All the evidence suggests you need prolonged contact, mostly in indoor settings, to pass the virus on, and that in that situation, esp with recycled air systems, the 2m distance won't do you any good at all - an entire office floor could easily get infected by a single person.

We know symptoms and they are obvious at this time of year, we can get tested quickly, we are isolating mainly anyway so even if we did it should only spread within a family or small group.

Yes, right up to mid-March people would be coughing in the office with barely a raised eyebrow.... I think we underestimate how much our mindset has been changed. Things that we didn’t bat an eyelid at previously, we are now hyper-sensitive over, to the extent that a few neighbours having a chat only 1 metre apart instead of 2 becomes an inevitable super-spreading event in our minds!

Exactly! Our neighbours had friends in their garden and were obviously socially distanced but a part of me did raise an eyebrow for a second.

I wonder what on earth will happen in Autumn/Winter when colds start circulating.. my daughter gets a cold & cough every other week, we’ll be permanently isolating! 😰 no idea how that’s going to work with work, I can’t take weeks off nor can I afford to take unpaid leave!

I wonder how they are going to excuse today's figures? Looks like a rise from here that is pretty steep.

Bol87 wouldn’t you only have to isolate if she tests positive?

The problem with the infection rate is that we pretty much know that there are 8000-9000 cases a day, so that testing is only picking up a proportion of those. We could just be picking up more of the positive ones. Still there is a very low percentage of tests that are positive- around 2%.

I think at the moment admissions may be a better indication of rising levels. I'm waiting for the slides to be uploaded so I can check those.

I wonder what on earth will happen in Autumn/Winter when colds start circulating.. my daughter gets a cold & cough every other week, we’ll be permanently isolating!

Everyone can get tested now though, and I’d
expect the “15 minutes to get result” tests will be commonplace by then, so you’ll know if symptoms are Covid or not.

I wonder how they are going to excuse today's figures? Looks like a rise from here that is pretty steep.

The numbers will ebb and flow depending on how they are reported... You need to look at the average over a week. A slight daily rise (and it’s nothing dramatic) is no more to be bemoaned than a slight daily fall is to be celebrated.

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

Look at the graphs one here. This site shows the deaths in English hospitals,it puts the deaths on the day they happened rather than when they are reported. For instance, some of the deaths reported today actually happened in the middle of April. This continues to show a downward trend. It also takes out the lag of reporting over the weekend.

@SudokuBook
Is that not because we are testing more

I think you are right. If you look at new cases proportionate to tests then it looks a bit like this.

Livin am I right in saying you can still only get a test with symptoms? And that graph shows that less than 5% of tests of people with possible covid symptoms actually have a positive covid test?

I agree, 29th Feb I was at a party, hugged numerous people and was in a room with 100 people dancing and sweating. Even with lockdown being eased most of the things that we did before that were "spready" are now not happening. No dinner parties, most office workers at home, no parties, pubs, theatre etc. Supermarkets must have much lower footfall, I know a lot of people that haven't been in one for months and that must help.

No mass gatherings is key. It's when things open up like shopping centres, schools, offices and public transport gets busier that it'll be a problem. But when so many workers can wfh, no concerts, no festivals, no theatres, no sports crowds, no packed out pubs and bars. All these things were happening as late as mid March.

At this point it's mostly spreading through hospitals and care homes.

I wonder if there will be fewer than normal winter coughs and colds anyway due to our increased hygiene awareness and vigilance?

Daily figures aren't all that useful. As others have said a death reported today could have happened weeks ago, reporting slows down over a weekend and then is 'caught up' in figures reported over the following days and so on.

If you look at charts using a rolling weekly average, or those that backfill deaths to when they actually occurred, you can see a definate decline.

I REALLY don't think this!

Adherence to the restrictions worked. Now, we are in the first phase of lifting the restrictions, people's resolve is weakening.

I think on the 1st July, the hospitals will be struggling to cope with admissions.

"Most of us are sanitising letter boxes and doorbells..."

@FurForksSake we really arent

@sawollya

I REALLY don't think this!

Adherence to the restrictions worked. Now, we are in the first phase of lifting the restrictions, people's resolve is weakening.

I think on the 1st July, the hospitals will be struggling to cope with admissions.

Obviously time will tell and we can come back and check but my opinion is that that is extremely unlikely.

The world has learned so much about the virus and the general public is so much more aware of what they need to do that it makes no sense that in the future hospitals would struggle to cope when they didn't during the peak number of cases.

When this started non of us were social distancing, why would a small number of covidiots ignoring the rules put us in a worse situation?