How low is low enough

[RosieLemonade]

For things to open up a bit more? I wouldn't even be able to guess a ball park figure. 10,000 or 5,000 or 1,000? Less than that?

Definitely under 10k, personally I’d like to see 5k but I don’t know if that’s feasible either for T&T to get a grip on or for the public to be on board with. I imagine it’ll depend on the spread of the new variants and any locations/environments that may be more difficult to control infections in.

10,000 or 5,000 or 1,000 what and where?

Deaths per week in Wales? Admissions to intensive care per day in England? Cases per 100,000 in Scotland?

It will be on the number of people in hospital as those under 60 tend to survive if they are hospitalised, but can spend weeks and even months being treated.

There is a time lag between positive test results and hospitalisation.

10k cases a day is about the level where other countries with a similar approach would be locking down, so definitely lower than that. It would only take 2 doubling to be back at 40k cases a day. We’ll be locked back down again in no time.

5k would still be 3 doublings to get to the same level and is about the level we were at when the circuit breaker was recommended in September.

It would have to be less than 1000 I think.

i dont think they should go by cases. i dont care if 50,000 people a day get it if most have a minor case

vaccines should enable that

I think it needs to be based on hospitalisations. Cases aren't necessarily a problem if they're not translating to people needing hospital treatment. We may have more cases as things start to reopen but with with the vaccine rollout to those who are more likely to get seriously ill, we hopefully won't see hospital numbers rising too quickly.

Doubling rate in the UK is currently 130 days so there's a decent enough buffer there to see if things are starting to become unmanageable again.

I think they will be hoping for 10k cases a day by 22nd when they announce their opening plan.

Then around 5k by the 8th March schools possibly starting to open

Then end of March around 1or2k. From memory we were about 1k cases a day when we started opening up last time. That was when we were only testing people with symptoms. Now a lot of places are testing people once or twice a week just as routine.

Oh sorry meant to say. Yes hospitalisation too but as cases go down that will happen anyway. Maybe actually more sharply than cases if the vaccine does its job❤

I don’t think we have enough of the population vaccinated yet to discount cases. You’d need at least the over 50s vaccinated and the target for that is May. We’ll probably get there before that, but I don’t think it is necessary to keep everything closed that long.

The number of cases is falling, so there can’t be a doubling rate of 130 days.

@Pastanred

i dont think they should go by cases. i dont care if 50,000 people a day get it if most have a minor case

vaccines should enable that

I agree but we’re still a long way off having enough people vaccinated to rely on that to relieve the pressure on hospitals.

Cases are the best way to predict future hospital requirements. If you relied on admissions at the moment you’re risking being unprepared for a wave of admissions.

I think they need to go back to tiers again. We have 30 cases per 100,000 at the moment.

Nope. I disagree with tiers. It majorly impacts areas where blue collar work is high & people have no choice but to go to work. And funnily enough those areas are already suffering with poverty. Keeping shops, pubs, restaurants closed in those areas while the richer south who can mostly WFH will destroy those areas even more.

I live in a very low case area and would gladly see everything opening up but a couple towns surrounding me are two of those areas. As such, we’ve been stuck in restrictions since July. While I watched my family enjoying meeting indoors, going for meals, lunches until November in Hampshire, we’ve not even been allowed to see people in gardens for going on 12 months. It’s soul destroying. I’ve lost count of how many people I know who are suffering with mental health problems now.. it’s a crisis of its own.

I think what we learnt from the last tier experiment was that nobody stays where they are supposed to. It’s a nice idea but unless you can restrict travel between tiers it won’t work.

There’s no point sticking Cornwall in tier 1 if all the people in tiers 3 and 4 travel down there for a holiday. And I doubt very much all the people in tiers 3 & 4 are just staying in and not going into any of the stuff that’s open in lower tier areas when they are visiting.

Most might, but it wasn’t enough to stop cornwall’s numbers shooting up under tier 1.

Totally agree. Tiers cause extra spread by people travelling fur8than they would on an average day

Unless we are going to take everyone's car keys and stop all public transportation. Then tier away

I know someone who spread Covid by bubbling with a household in a lower tier. Such bubbling is completely within the guidance and legal so the tier system is a complete load of crap.

I'm in Italy and we had 11,000 new cases and about 300 deaths yesterday. Most of the country apart from 2 or 3 regions opening up now. Schools been back since 7th Jan.

Sorry, missed a sentence. Meant to add that it looks like the 5-10,000 case mark is what triggers relaxing of restrictions etc.

I think they'll reopen schools on 8th March whatever the numbers are as long as they continue downwards .

I would also expect us to go back into tiers again. So others don't think this is what will happen ? I am just aware that my area in the Midlands seems to have a lot more cases at present than a lot of other areas . I suppose we have another 4 weeks , even to 8th March so hopefully our numbers will continue to go down further .

I think tiers probably will happen. It’s just whether it should happen. It seems to me that it just breeds resentment while not being particularly effective.

It’s only going to work if there’s active policing of travel rather than just trusting people not to break the rules. And if you do that people will start complaining about civil liberties, so it’s probably easier just to treat the whole country as one.

Boris has already basically said tiers will be scrapped.

No to tiers. It just drives people between areas - the government have said that a countty/regional tier system is unlikely this time around.

I think it now all depends on the new variant spread- the South Africa one in particular. If this means that the Oxford vaccine is less effective we're pretty much back to square one until the booster is ready in Autumn. The Kent one became the most dominant in a manner of weeks in December so the SA could do the same.

If it goes back into tiers, I for one will not comply. We’ve already been punished for high cases in the south of our county for months and I won’t put up with it any longer! I’m sure there are plenty of people who feel the same as me.

@LadyCatStark

If it goes back into tiers, I for one will not comply. We’ve already been punished for high cases in the south of our county for months and I won’t put up with it any longer! I’m sure there are plenty of people who feel the same as me.

But it's not a punishment, it's to protect you and your community....

The whole reason for lockdown in the first place is due to the NHS being overwhelmed, not numbers of cases. The second the NHS can cope with the number of people in hospitals, we should lift lockdown.