Good news part 7

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

For all your vaccine news, treatment development stories and other positive things to make you feel there is hope for the future!
Good news only please!

Useful websites we are referring to a lot:

Government daily statistics

Worldometer for international case number comparisons

Covid Messenger for local authority figures, thanks to LittleOwl for all her hard work!

OurWorldInData international vaccination figures

Omnicalculator vaccine queue calculator NB Please don’t take this too seriously- it depends what vaccine delivery speed and uptake you estimate so it’s not written in stone.

I'm worried about schools returning as my DD is a teacher. 😕

Not positive news, but more caution around the media spin on death figures. Different countries have different ways of recording CV deaths - in the UK we're being over-inclusive so including everyone dying with Covid in the stats and our excess deaths are lower. Other countries are only declaring people dying OF covid. I think its only going to be long term views of excess deaths that's really going to be able to ascertain the true impact.

@IncludeWomenInTheSequel

Scotland is at 8.5% and England are at 10ish I think? I know there's uproar in certain quarters about this but I don't think the discrepancy is massive. We're vaccinating around 23/24k people a day.

^^ This

The continual comments about the Scottish Government "sitting on doses" when there is no actual evidence of that being the case doesn't really count as good news for those of us in Scotland.

Is the Mayor of London sitting on his doses as well? (7.2%)

Interested to hear 8th March as possible school teacher-opening date. Does anyone know if that’s all schools or just primary? I’d be over joyed if my 2 teen DC’s could get back by then.

Exactly, I mean, for what possible reason would we do that?

11 new vaccination centres are opening in my region this week. We are getting there but clearly the absolutely shambolic Tory opposition see value in pushing that narrative.

That was meant to say ‘school re-opening date’ not school teacher opening date!

www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/clinical-areas/immunology-and-vaccines/uk-government-spinning-misleading-figures-about-covid-vaccine-supply-says-sturgeon/

In the Holyrood debate, Conservative MP Ruth Davidson accused the Scottish Government of lagging ‘behind its own target’ on the vaccination programme, with GP practices not receiving supply.

She said: ‘As of yesterday, the Scottish Government has taken receipt of 717,000 doses of the vaccine, but more than 400,000 have yet to reach patients.’

@louisejxxx

I think that’s about in line with what I thought would be the case, so am fairly pleased to hear that is what will happen if all targets are met.

Lots of media focus on the 100000 deaths and how awful this is compared to others today - is anyone else flashing back to that graph about us having the highest vaccine take up?! Something tells me when all is said and done, if that graph is correct and take up is much lower in other EU countries, they too will have death rates similar to ours.

I said exactly this about vaccine uptake/death rates in the EU to my friend earlier today! Also about the different ways in which Countries are recording deaths.

Wooooaaaaaahhhhh we're halfway theeeerrrreeee!!!!!!

AaaaaAAAAAAHHH!!!

(living on a prayer)

311,060 1st dose vaccines administered today. Better than the last couple of days. Over 7m 1st doses now.

InterfectoremVulpes -

Fantastic singing infectorem. Now I have an earworm!

25,308 new cases and 1,725 new deaths
compared to
38,905 new cases and 1,820 new deaths last Wednesday.

Its shit, but not quite as shit.

It is at least a definite drop in deaths, albeit a small one, after staying at roughly the same level for a few days. It could be the beginning of the figures turning round.

The drop in cases is very good- I am pleased there’s no sign yet of levelling off.

Countess have your looked at the Zoe app? I'm only looking for a quick glance but after a few weeks of steady drops it looks on their little charts as if there's the start of a levelling off happening? I don't know how else to look so I could be wrong.

I have updated the table of cases in councils on the www.covidmessenger.com homepage with today's data release.

It remains so green! Hooray!

ie the vast majority of councils have falling cases week over week!

This is very good news indeed! So many councils are continuing to register week-over-week falls. Please goodness this trend will continue.

In England we have:
289 councils with falling cases week over week
26 councils with rising cases week over week

You can check your council on the table on www.covidmessenger.com and I do update them every day with the govt daily data release.

And, as always, you can click the columns to quickly sort the data in the table... particularly handy (I find) when you click the county column as it lets you see the situation in all the councils in your county easily.

Especially pertinent given the tiering decisions will almost certainly be at county level when the tiering system returns.

It's been reassuring to see the daily "wall of green" on the table. Please may it continue!!!

www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/spanish-pharma-claims-new-drug-may-reduce-covid-load-by-99-per-cent/ar-BB1d8qKM?ocid=msedgntp

Have we seem this? Plitidepsin - looking like an amazing treatment.

Zoe's got our cases rising again for the second day running. It's all over the place!

I can’t comment on Zoe, unfortunately, as I don’t use the app and wouldn’t know where to find the data .

@Truelymadlydeeplysomeonesmum

Beijing is using anal swabs to test its residents for coronavirus, a method that experts say is more accurate and raises the chances of detecting the virus.

No just no

Good grief @Truelymadlydeeplysomeonesmum !!!

Posted photo twice!!!!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

25,308 new cases and 1,725 new deaths compared to 38,905 new cases and 1,820 new deaths last Wednesday.

Isn't it the case drop that is more important indicator? Don't want to sound dismissive of deaths of course.

Thank you again @littleowl1

@FuzzyPuffling try not to let Zoe panic you - my town has been all over the place. I’ve started ignoring the local numbers and just checking nationwide. I’m putting it down to the fact that they obviously only test a sample of the population, so if in a particular area there is a weird amount of cases one day (but not necessarily a “spike”, could be all sorts of reasons) and it makes the data skewed.

JVT answering very well on school issue on briefing