How are people still catching the virus?

[Baileysforchristmas]

Numbers are still so high, are people catching it from supermarkets? Does 2 metres apart still stop you catching it? Are you still pretty safe outside if you stay at least 2 metres apart?

A lot of people are likely bending rules or doing things within the rules that aren’t in the spirit of them to be able to remain employed. Examples I know include:

Friends where both parents are wfh (accountant/admin) who work for local uni/council respectively. Accountant’s work have said they consider them critical workers so aren’t prepared to be flexible on childcare & admin is expected to be available 9-5 as usual. As a result they’ve opted to ask for a school place so there are 3 kids in 2 different schools.
Friends who are taking turns to go physically into the office when they could wfh all the time and turns doing the childcare/homeschooling while working so that they at least get a couple of days a week each when they can focus on work properly.
Us. We are using my parents for childcare. They live a 50 minute drive away. Kids are picked up Monday morning and dropped off Tuesday afternoon then picked up Thursday morning and dropped off Friday lunchtime.
Friends with no children going into the office as work require them to even though they can work from home (& did last time)

I would imagine individually all these things make very little difference but lots and lots of them will be happening and collectively they will make a difference. I can’t comment on the others but in terms of our family OH and I wfh, have a weekly shopping delivery, go out most days for a walk and parents go to supermarket and to/from us to collect or drop off kids. They shouldn’t be having the kids overnight as we aren’t working then and there will be some increase in transmission risk from having kids overnight. We’ve come to the conclusion we do not care enough about the increase to say no to their offer to help with childcare. This way we can both get our work done pretty much as normal, have time to do things together as a family and aren’t so stressed we are snapping at the kids; the kids get a retired teacher doing work with them 1:1 four days a week, get full attention from a parent while at home and get to see their grandparents; My parents get to see their grandchildren and have something to keep them busy. I think many people will be like us and think I’m willing to follow this to a point but I’m not willing to make my entire life 10x more difficult for months on end and risk losing my job through poor performance if I can instead do something that creates minimal additional risk. If the government really wanted people to stay at home and gave a toss then they could have made it compulsory to offer furlough for childcare. They didn’t and lots of employers (including ours) won’t offer it. You want to blame someone then maybe blame them for their policy rather than individuals for caring more about the guaranteed impact to their families financial security than the risk of catching covid and putting strain on the NHS. I stress the risk of catching covid because that’s what it is where for many the alternative bad outcome for their family is a certainty

LivinLaVidaLoki
Similar picture in my hospital. I'm afraid there's a LOT of hospital acquired infection. Staff are trying so hard, manically cleaning and observing all the rules but alas the rules are not logical. We have had loads of people from my department sent home to isolate as they sat next to someone who tested positive for ten minutes whilst doing desk work together. But when we have patients in our procedure room (not a theatre but similar set up for specific procedures) everything hangs on whether it is an aerosol generating procedure. If it is (regardless of Covid status): full PPE, and leave the room empty for one hour at the end before doing a full deep clean. (Which massively impacts our schedules as you can imagine).
If it's not AGP: then again, regardless of Covid status, we only need to wear basic PPE (pinny, gloves and ordinary mask) and a general clean down after. So we had a Covid positive patient for a two hour procedure - most of us, including the consultant, decided to protect ourselves by wearing full PPE even though we could be criticised for doing this as the regulation is for basic PPE and funnily enough this would not require us to go home and isolate. Then because we were running late, the next patient was straight into the room after a normal quick wipe down. A cancer patient, at particular risk.
I feel so bad about it. I wouldn't have wanted to be treated in the room so soon after the previous patient. I will be keeping an eye on his progress over the next 2-3 weeks in case he develops infection.
Incidentally the Covid positive patient had two negative tests following admission early in January before testing positive at the weekend. 
I don't think people appreciate that in the first lockdown practically all normal hospital activity ceased to free up facilities for Covid patients. My area kept cancer services going by making use of two local private hospitals. And whilst some hospitals were very busy, others found themselves kicking their heels. It did mean there wasn't so much hospital acquired infection.
This time it's pretty much business as usual meaning there is inevitably much mixing of patient groups and in the words of one of our ICU consultants "it's popping up all over the hospital".

That's really informative TheLoneR thank you.

Aerosol wise it can still be in the room 3 hours later but I can see leaving theatres and treatment rooms empty for 3 hours would cripple hospitals.

I think the fact that some hospitals were kicking their heels as you put it in lockdown one has fed into the hospitals are empty conspiracy rubbish. In retrospect it would have been good if they could have carried on with their waiting lists then if not overrun by Covid. Shame they've gone to the other extreme this time of trying to do business as usual in a much worse wave but the pressures from not getting through the lists then mean mounted pressure now? Let's hope this kicks their arses to start properly funding hospitals and schools and social care so we have some wiggle room and capacity when a crisis hits rather than being underfunded, staffed and resourced before we even start.

Universities have entire floors of empty flats, but are still having students fully occupy other flats, all sharing tiny kitchens and bathrooms, sometimes up to 14 students per flat. When students ask if there are other flats to move to, they're told no!

Although students aren't there chances are that many of the flats have their possessions in. At DD's university none were told to remove their,stuff and most expected to be able to return before now.

There are some where students have moved out of rooms, but the rest of the flat haven't. However, these still aren't in huge numbers at lots of places. There are still waiting lists at some university halls.

So,I don't think it's quite as easy as just moving students about,

Everyone I know at the moment either got it at a hospital appointment or in a supermarket.

Anecdotal obviously.

TheHoneyBadger
The time calculations were made following testing of ventilation systems. In theatres where there is excellent positive air flow they only need to leave the room for ten minutes after an AGP. This still requires changes in activity, for instance when intubating for anaesthesia this is AGP, so everyone leaves the room except the anaesthetist and assistants, they wait ten minutes before reentering and commencing the operation. (I assume in emergencies this might not be followed precisely). For our procedure room the ventilation tests meant we have to leave the room empty for an hour.

Regarding my "kicking their heels" comment, obviously I wasn't working in those hospitals so I don't know exactly what was going on. But I based it on some statistics I saw after the first lockdown comparing deathrates in different hospitals. Clearly some were hugely challenged with deaths (from covid) in the high hundreds. Remember for every death there must have been a number of admissions of people who recovered and were discharged. In other parts of the country hospitals recording just a handful of deaths must surely not have had a significant number of admissions?

For comparison sake my own hospital was middling with about 70 deaths at that time (May). We kept busy but manageable. We had initially converted an area of theatres for covid ICU, before repurposing another ward and creating a whole new isolation ICU. This is currently full and now an area of theatres is being repurposed again. We are much busier and consequently there is a lot of hospital acquired infection.

Supermarket-Waitrose to be precise.

@Abraxan

Universities have entire floors of empty flats, but are still having students fully occupy other flats, all sharing tiny kitchens and bathrooms, sometimes up to 14 students per flat. When students ask if there are other flats to move to, they're told no!

Although students aren't there chances are that many of the flats have their possessions in. At DD's university none were told to remove their,stuff and most expected to be able to return before now.

There are some where students have moved out of rooms, but the rest of the flat haven't. However, these still aren't in huge numbers at lots of places. There are still waiting lists at some university halls.

So,I don't think it's quite as easy as just moving students about,

I meant "empty" as to mean no one moved in in September, not just that people moved in and went home again. These are entire floors which were never rented out due to low numbers of students wanting to move onto campus this year. So, no, they don't have possessions etc in them, they've deliberately been left "un-let" whilst others were filled to normal capacity levels,

Ah I see. I guess some universities may have empty ones. I only know about DD's and her best friends and know that they haven't got this issue. Dd was on a waiting list only at the end of November and they were full at that point, though a place did come up in December.
Her best friend still hasn't been able to get into halls as full.
Unless they are holding some back I guess, though that doesn't appear to the case where dd is.

I assume the universities doing this must have their reasons - I assume it must be a financial decision. Maybe more government support might help them if it is due to now being able to finance partially empty blocks??

@Kazzyhoward if they are completely unlet then the uni wouldn't have hired the cleaners to clean them and/or the required number of staff to maintain them.

@yearinyearout

Imagine it's still spreading from Christmas at the moment. Households I know have caught it mixing at Christmas and it's still working it's way through the family. Hoping to see some reductions in figures in the next week or two.

The BBC report today that Christmas mixing hasn't resulted in a spike in cases.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/55669736

Small example, my neighbour had some shelves built, I asked how it was going as we happened to be by our bins at same time, he offered for me to come into see... I declined, we are a house of 4,he two but had workman there recently.
What if I had said yes, I felt awful saying no?

That one simple act of stepping into his house would have linked us up to continue a chain and yet others are in and out of friends or relatives houses all the time.

'the sharp increases seen between the 20 and 30 December cannot be attributed to the holiday.'

[quote RedMarauder]@Kazzyhoward if they are completely unlet then the uni wouldn't have hired the cleaners to clean them and/or the required number of staff to maintain them.[/quote]
Yes, indeed, but that decision to save money will have contributed to the rise in infection rate among the students and staff, and caused more students to isolate unnecessarily. At a time when we're being told to stay apart, it's madness to have a money saving decision to crowd people together unnecessarily.

This time it's pretty much business as usual meaning there is inevitably much mixing of patient groups and in the words of one of our ICU consultants "it's popping up all over the hospital".

My MIL was admitted to hospital on the 30th November following a fall, she also had an underlying infection which they struggled to find / treat. Fast forward to today and she tested positive for covid. When we asked previously about the vaccination we were told she would have it on discharge.

So here we are, 7 weeks since the fall and now has covid. It was always my fear (hospital infections are a significant risk) and for whatever reason it has happened.

A poor chap at work, who hasn’t worked with us for a while, he went to see his grandchildren at Christmas caught Covid, he died yesterday 😢 his poor grandchildren most feel awful.

This time it's pretty much business as usual meaning there is inevitably much mixing of patient groups and in the words of one of our ICU consultants "it's popping up all over the hospital".

What I find strange is that despite our main hospital having three distinct large buildings, which are separate, the "covid" wards are mixed throughout all the buildings and on different floors. I would have thought it made more sense to at least have one building "covid" free, and maybe another building where the covid patients were concentrated. I know that wards have different specialties, etc., but the people I know who've been in hospital there in the last year have been in "general" wards, where you literally have a covid ward opposite or next door to a non covid ward. Not only would there be mixing of staff, equipment, trolleys, cleaners, etc., I'd strongly suspect that the air ducts etc would be common too!

Or....we could follow the rules STRICTLY - because they are there for a reason - & not be potentially responsible for killing innocent people. Your choice?

Because the don't wash their hands after picking their nose or scratching their bum. Thus passing onto a household of nose pickers/bum scratchers. Ad infinitum.