Coronavirus

Brigantium said:
Apparently there are a lot of cases among younger working age people, and more cases than you would expect in children.
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You don't say.
 
Reading a bit more on Leicester, there are accusations that food processing plants and clothing factories are where the infections happened. It's claimed that some factories (labelled 'sweatshops' by one newspaper) shut down due to outbreaks without furloughing staff, resulting in staff moving on to other factories and spreading infection there.

It's pretty bad that it's taken so long to sound the alarm and reinstate restrictions, though. I would have thought any sudden increase in cases - say it went from 2 a day to 10 a day for a couple of days, should be enough for the authorities to start considering emergency measures.
 
Brigantium said:
It's pretty bad that it's taken so long to sound the alarm and reinstate restrictions, though. I would have thought any sudden increase in cases - say it went from 2 a day to 10 a day for a couple of days, should be enough for the authorities to start considering emergency measures.
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The mayor of Leicester is outraged (and rightfully so), as it apparently took Matt Hancock 11 days to act on the surge of positive cases there.
 
It's got to be said, though, it's fairly easy to keep up with how many confirmed cases there are in your area. You can just check the Public Health England dashboard online everyday and look at cases reported by local authority area. That's how I know there have been two more diagnosed in this town in the past couple of days, and others in nearby towns. You'd still expect the Government or PHE to specifically raise the issue with the local authority, however.
 
Brigantium said:
It's got to be said, though, it's fairly easy to keep up with how many confirmed cases there are in your area. You can just check the Public Health England dashboard online everyday and look at cases reported by local authority area.
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That is true, but do local authorities have the powers to impose a lock-down?

Brigantium said:
You'd still expect the Government or PHE to specifically raise the issue with the local authority, however.
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That would be common sense but we are, unfortunately, led by donkeys.
 
GhostofCain said:
That is true, but do local authorities have the powers to impose a lock-down?
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They do have some powers, eg parks, playgrounds, maybe schools, some public places. If someone in emergency planning at the local authority was watching the figures, though, they could communicate information about any rise in cases to the council leaders and local MPs, though, who would ask for urgent talks with the Government.
 
Local authorities can have restaurants closed down for hygiene reasons so it should't be too big a leap to have factories shut down for public health emergencies.
 
Black Wizard said:
Local authorities can have restaurants closed down for hygiene reasons so it should't be too big a leap to have factories shut down for public health emergencies.
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Local authorities have the power to act on local clusters, but to act on outbreaks a minister needs to use existing emergency powers. This could mean introducing legislation, which is way beyond what a local authority can do:

www.bbc.co.uk

Covid rules: What are the restrictions in your area?

Use our search tool to find out about coronavirus rules and restrictions where you live.
www.bbc.co.uk
 
They might not be able to shut down workplaces where there haven't been outbreaks, though, or generally close all non-essential shops on the offchance that there might be a hygiene issue.

Anyway, I've just read in an article in my local paper - which is countering a bizarre and highly inaccurate-looking story in the Express claiming that one town was on the verge of lockdown - and it turns out that the headline PHE figures being published every day are for hospital-based tests only. Tests from temporary testing stations aren't included in the headline 'Pillar 1' figures for some reason. :mad: Sure enough, the PHE figures show Leicester has only had 1059 confirmed cases in total, when we know it's actually 3126. That is one hell of a difference. It might also explain a discrepancy of 300 between Wikipedia/Worldometer figures for the number of UK cases one day last week and Government figures. I'm sure I've seen Pillar 2 figures online somewhere before, but they could be older stats. That really, really stinks.
 
Apparently the US is getting 40,000 cases per day. I thought the virus was just going to disappear in the US! Fauci says they might soon see 100,000 cases per day which is mind-boggling. If the UK is led by donkeys what is the US led by?
 
Black Wizard said:
Apparently the US is getting 40,000 cases per day. I thought the virus was just going to disappear in the US! Fauci says they might soon see 100,000 cases per day which is mind-boggling.
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Shit, I’d better inject more Lysol and swallow a blacklight.
 
So, in response to the Leicester fiasco, and claims in national press that several other towns are about to go into stricter lockdown measures, the Government has released local breakdowns of the number of confirmed cases per 100,000 residents in the period June 15-21. Incredibly longwinded and slow way of doing things, and it leaves everyone from local authorities to local press and members of the public with some fun maths homework to work out how many confirmed coronavirus cases there actually were in their area a week and a half ago.

It does look like Bradford, Barnsley and Rochdale do have scary numbers of cases, goodness knows what the figure is now. There were also more than double the number of confirmed cases in the towns local to me than the figures announced that week.

While it might be convenient to Government lockdown-easing plans to release details of only half (or fewer) confirmed cases in each area every day, I can't help thinking this is a bugger-up relating to the way private sector contractors doing the drive-through centre and postal tests in England, Scotland and NI are reporting their information. Surely they report the results to the people undergoing tests as fast as possible, and they also give numbers of confirmed cases to the Government promptly, but why wait a few days before saying which area the cases relate to?

Public Health England's information site is still showing a cumulative total of Covid cases in Leicester as not much over 1000 when we know it's well over 3000. It also looks like Wales has a much higher rate of the disease, when actually Wales is the only nation to report all positive test results daily.
 
I decided to have a look at who the Facebook users are who keep on doing angry face reactions and laughing at people who make positive comments whenever anybody advertises face masks or any kind of Covid PPE. The same names keep on coming up over and over again. Turns out most of them have far right and 'white lives matter' type posts all over the place, the one mask they didn't shout down was a British Army logo one. :rolleyes: The rest appear to be Czechs and Romanians living in the UK. All I can think is that they're migrant workers who don't currently have any work because of Covid restrictions.

Anyway, some better news, sort of. The Government has started publishing the full daily local authority area figures for confirmed Covid cases - ie they now include the cases confirmed by private contractors as well as cases confirmed by NHS hospital and Public Health England labs. So my town has suddenly got 200+ more cases than we originally thought, although most of them were probably diagnosed weeks or months ago. Leicester now has the correct figure of 3700+, and not the 1500 or whatever was still showing in the published official figures a few days ago. Just a bit of a change. At least with the correct figures, people can see what's happening locally and assess risks for themselves.
 
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