The number of people testing positive for coronavirus has shot up again by 1,427. We now have 8,077 confirmed cases. That is as of 9:00 am yesterday morning - see HERE - presumably there will be another big increase later this morning. We have ceased to be shocked since the figure didn't even make the headlines as far as I can see. I don't know if the press is being asked to play down the extent to which the virus is beginning to get a grip in Britain but it seems like it to me.
Bear in mind the government stopped community testing on the 13th of March, so the real figure is much higher than this. How high? We simply don't know. Jeremy Hunt, a former Health Secretary, in the House of Commons on Monday claimed one million people could be infected at the end of next week. He was basing this on a 0.1% probable death rate and the figure as it was last Sunday.
Yesterday, with 422 confirmed deaths, using his method, we can extrapolate the number of people infected at over 400,000. If this is doubling every 5 days we will certainly be at a million cases next week.
Hunt's contribution to the debate on the Coronavirus Bill on Monday was very helpful, particularly concerning the lack of community testing and tracing.. You can read it HERE (Column 63). An extract:
"South Korea has avoided national lockdown, despite having a worse outbreak than us; Taiwan introduced temperature screening in malls and office buildings, but kept shops and restaurants open—it has had just two deaths. In Singapore, restaurants remain open and schools are reopening, although working from home is discouraged. Again, in Singapore, there have been just two deaths.
"Ten days ago in this country, we went in the opposite direction, and stopped testing in the community. How can we possibly suppress the virus if we do not know where it is? So far, we have had 281 deaths, tragically. According to the modellers, there is about one death per 1,000 cases, which means that we have just under 300,000 cases in this country.
"According to the same modellers, the number of cases is doubling every five days, which means that at the end of next week we will have about 1 million cases or more in this country. Unless we radically change direction, we will not know where those 1 million cases are."
"The Prime Minister talked about expanding testing from 5,000 to 10,000 to 25,000, which is welcome. He even talked about 250,000 tests a day, which would be more than anywhere in the world—I welcome that ambition, but ambition is not the same as a national plan, and we have not seen a national plan on testing."
According to an article in the FT this morning (behind a paywall) but tweeted about below, as much as half the population could already have Covid-19:
On testing Jeremy Hunt, again on Monday, said:Deep scientific confusion. Oxford study suggests virus may already have infected as much as half UK population, with majority developing very mild symptoms or none. “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model.” https://t.co/wUJWhVx1u1— Brian Groom (@GroomB) March 24, 2020
"We have an ambition to increase testing to 25,000 tests a day, but at the moment we are still only testing between 5,000 and 8,000 people every day. On Saturday, we tested 5,500, which is no significant increase on a week ago. It is not just South Korea that is testing more than us per head of population—Germany, Australia and Austria are as well. Now is the time for a massive national mobilisation behind testing and contact tracing.
And he urges the ramping up of contact tracing as South Korea and Singapore have done:
"And it is not just the science. Contact tracing is manpower-intensive, yet Public Health England has just 280 people devoted to this. We probably need 280 people in every city and county in the country. Every local government official doing planning applications, every civil servant working on non-corona issues and volunteers all should be mobilised in this vital national task.
"As we have heard, testing is vital for NHS staff who are desperate to get back to work."
"Testing is also vital for the economy. If we are going to have a year of stop-go as we try to protect the NHS if the virus comes back, testing and contact tracing allows an infinitely more targeted approach and way to control the spread of the virus than economic measures that are much more blunderbuss and do much more damage."
Robert Peston on Twitter posted a tweet showing "just how far behind curve [the government] has been on increasing testing capacity". Only on Sunday did Downing Street contact research institutes to ask if they could "borrow" any equipment to carry out Covid-19 testing which they wanted to collect on Monday (23rd) or Tuesday. If true this is truly stunning.
One of the big unanswered questions, asked by many of us for weeks, is why government moved so late to ramp up #COVID19 testing. @Jack_Blanchard_ has leaked email that shows just how far behind curve it has been on increasing testing capacity. See attached pic.twitter.com/QUAQzMuHCV— Robert Peston (@Peston) March 24, 2020
Brexit has largely disappeared from the front or even the inside pages while the pandemic ravages the globe. It seems almost insignificant now.
Peter Foster, has written his final column for The Telegraph before moving to The Times and has tweeted his thoughts which you can read HERE. We are in a state of Limbo with the cabinet committee overseeing the process suspended and members told it will not be sitting again 'until further notice'.
Foster thinks we should ignore the current official line from Number 10 and that we will "have no choice but to seek an extension to the negotiating period before July 1st". I agree with this.
And to summarise his thread about what happens afterwards:
"My personal hope is that Govt looks to negotiate a more thoughtful and less ideological Brexit than the one it was shaping up to deliver at the end of this year
"That means finding ways, for example, to maintain links to EU pandemic warning systems; to the EU's aviation safety agency and heeding the warnings of logistics and business on fragility of supply chains
"A more measured approach will, I suspect, partly be a question of necessity, since industry, business and the services will be in no position to absorb the kind of disruption and dislocations that the government was planning to inflict upon them.
"It is sobering to see that 10 days after the public started shopping hard, the supermarket supply chains have manifestly been unable to adjust for the demand.
"The battering of Sterling is another reminder of perils of being a small ship on a stormy sea".
I think most normal, pragmatic people would perhaps see it all panning out this way. But we are dealing with fanatical idealogues, not pragmatists, so who knows.
Keep taking care.
