More than 80% of people who tested positive in a national coronavirus survey had none of the core symptoms of the disease the day they took the test, scientists say.

Ian Sample www.theguardian.com

The finding has prompted fears that future Covid-19 outbreaks will be hard to control without more widespread testing in the community to pick up “silent transmission”, particularly in universities and high-risk workplaces such as meat processing facilities.

Researchers at UCL said 86.1% of infected people picked up by the Office for National Statistics Covid-19 survey between April and June had none of the main symptoms of the illness, namely a cough, or a fever, or a loss of taste or smell the day they had the test.

Three quarters who tested positive had no notable symptoms at all, the scientists found when they checked whether people reported other ailments such as fatigue and breathlessness on the day of testing.

Unlike coronavirus testing in the community which focuses on people with symptoms, the ONS infection survey routinely tests tens of thousands of households around the country whether the occupants have symptoms or not.

“At the moment, the focus is on people who have symptoms, but if you are not catching all those who are asymptomatic or presymptomatic it may be really difficult to get outbreaks down in time, before they get out of control,” said Irene Petersen, an author on the study and professor of epidemiology and health informatics.

While those who tested positive in the ONS survey may have gone on to develop a fever, cough or other common symptoms, Petersen believes there is a risk of “silent transmission” by people who are unaware they are infected.

The study, reported in Clinical Epidemiology, analysed the symptoms described by more than 36,000 people who were tested between April and June. Only 115 tests came back positive and of those only 27 people, or 23.5%, had symptoms of any description.

When the scientists narrowed the symptoms down to the main three for coronavirus infections, namely a cough, or a fever, or a loss of taste or smell, the number reporting the ailments fell to 16 or 13.9%.

On the back of the findings, Petersen argues that universities and high-risk work places, such as meat processing facilities, should do regular testing to pick up people who may be infectious but are not displaying symptoms. She urged universities to ramp up testing capacity now so students could be tested through the autumn and crucially before they return home at Christmas. “Anybody who’s had students coming home at Christmas knows they often bring some sort of bug with them and this Christmas in particular they could bring Covid home and potentially seed new outbreaks,” she said.

Last month, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) issued a similar warning, stating there was a “critical risk” of large numbers of infected students sparking outbreaks across the country when they returned home at the end of the term.

Given the pressure on testing capacity, Petersen said pooled testing was needed, where swabs are grouped together and tested as one batch. Since most people do not have the virus, most pooled tests will be negative, but when a batch tests positive, the contributors need to be tested individually to identify the infected person.

Patrick Maxwell, head of the school of clinical medicine at Cambridge, said the study underscored that many people who are infected are asymptomatic. “There will be great public health benefit in terms of reducing transmission if we can reliably identify asymptomatic individuals and they then self-isolate,” he said.

He said Cambridge was piloting an approach that uses pooled samples to enable a “mass asymptomatic testing programme” for students.

Owl has just been tipped the wink that the Parish Council is holding another online meeting to discuss the objection that Charlie Hopkins has written on behalf of the Parish Council to the planning application. They will also be discussing the latest additional amendments to the planning application at Winslade Manor and surrounding buildings. 

Those wanting to “attend” this virtual meeting need to email the Parish Clerk beforehand to get login details ( Bishopsclyst@gmail.com ). Owl assumes they should also include their name and address.

This link will take you to a copy of Charlie Hopkins’ draft objection ( the planning barrister employed by the Parish Council)

Your Local Democracy Reporters keeping Devon and Cornwall informed

This article explains how the BBC funds journalists to provide a Local Democratic Reporting Service as a partnership between the BBC and local news organisations. [The Watch first reported on the BBC’s intention to do this in 2015, but it took until 2018 to happen]

The online article features Local Democracy Reporters: Ed Oldfield who covers Torbay and Plymouth;  Richard Whitehouse, Cornwall; and our own, and much valued, Daniel Clark who covers Devon.

Only Daniel is featured in this post (to see the others’ profiles go on-line).

 It’s good to be able to put a face to local news. [Followers will recall that the Times paparazzi snapped Owl unawares earlier in the year].

Nevertheless, there must be concern that we have to rely on a single source of Local Democratic Reporting as the Government “goes on manoeuvres” over the “impartiality” of the BBC.

Devon Live www.devonlive.com 

In these unprecedented times, it has never been more important that the facts of what is happening are reported.

Everywhere you look, you can find some sort of conspiracy theory and someone with an agenda to drive, and that muddies the truth around the most important issues of the day.

Getting to the bottom of what is happening is not always easy and certainly not quick – and in a world where journalists are under more and more pressure to hit ever increasing numbers and volumes of targets when there are fewer and fewer of them remaining – the sometimes dry, complicated and detailed world of local councils, politics, and statistics could easily be put aside.

This is where the Local Democracy Reporting Service comes in. The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) was set up in 2018 in a unique partnership between the BBC and local news organisations such as Reach PLC, which publishes DevonLive, CornwallLive and PlymouthLive as well as the Herald Express, North Devon Journal, Express and Echo, Mid Devon Gazette, The Herald, West Briton, Cornishman, Cornish Guardian and the Western Morning News.

The journalists are funded by the BBC as part of its latest Charter commitment but employed by regional news organisations, with nearly Local Democracy Reporters having been allocated to 59 news organisations in England, Scotland and Wales.

The partnership has enabled reporters to get back into council chambers (once physical, now virtual), shining a light into the corners of local authorities and reporting on what has been happening.

Stories are then written, uploaded to a wire and distributed to all partner agencies, including our traditional ‘rival’ newspapers to use as they wish.

And since the coronavirus pandemic hit the country in March, nationwide, Local Democracy Reporters have published more than 15,000 stories relating to coronavirus – covering everything from the daily statistical updates, the impact of council finances, how individuals and businesses have been affected, and the knock-on impacts that the lockdown will have going forward.

All of this has run alongside the usual business of covering council activities – although rather than putting reporters back in County Hall as originally planned, it has seen us dial it Zoom calls or watch meetings live on Youtube.

Virtual meetings have enabled democracy (and subsequent reporting of it) to carry on throughout the pandemic, but every reporter is longing for the day the words ‘you’re on mute councillor’ is a thing of a past.

Daniel Clark

Daniel is the LDR for Devon – mainly focused on covering Devon County Council, as well as when time allows, the eight district councils – East Devon District Council, Exeter City Council, Mid Devon District Council, North Devon Council, South Hams District Council, Teignbridge District Council, Torridge District Council, and West Devon Borough Council, plus Dartmoor National Park

Local Democracy Reporter Daniel Clark (Image: DevonLive)

Coronavirus has been the main thing on everyone’s mind and lips this year, so it would be churlish not to mention it, but making sure that the facts and figures, and the latest comments, warnings and advice from the county’s Public Health Team is a vital part of the job – many stories could be mentioned, but here is the latest.

The other major story that has been in the news this year has been around race and the Black Lives Matters movement following the death of George Floyd in America. It has led to councils across Devon to re-examine their relationship with their historical past, their current relationship with minorities, and allowed those from BAME communities to tell their story in an attempt to affect change.

The Greater Exeter Strategic Plan was due to be the major blueprint for development across large swathes of Devon – covers East Devon, Exeter, Mid Devon and Teignbridge. Plans for thousands of new homes, including a second Cranbrook, relocating service stations, a sports hub etc were due to go out for consultation – but following a vote from East Devon, the GESP is now dead.

Exmouth seafront remains one of the most controversial sites in Devon – with the long awaited plans to regenerate the site having hit yet more setbacks this year. It may seem an age ago, but back in February, it felt like movement was finally being made when councillors backed the marketing exercise for the site, but since then, a call-in, a change of leadership, and the coronavirus pandemic have thrown the plans into chaos and back to square one.

It has been a year where active travel and getting people out of their cars and onto other forms of transport has been high on the agenda, with Exeter seeing road closures and new cycle lanes popping up, while plans to reopen railway lines have been progressed with bids submitted for Bere Alston to Tavistock, Cullompton, and the Marsh Barton station – so back in January – which feels like a different world – I went back and looked at all the lost railway lines as part of the Beeching Axe in Devon and Cornwall.

daniel.clark@reachplc.com

Telephone: 01392 346759 / 07775 030856

Read Daniel’s latest articles here,follow him on Twitter here and visit his Facebook page here.

Taking to the podium for his speech at the virtual Conservative Party conference on Tuesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed one of society’s burning issues: “We need to fix our broken housing market… We will help turn generation rent into generation buy.”

Ruby Lott-Lavigna www.vice.com 

This is not the first time in recent years that a Conservative Party leader has tried to get to grips with the housing crisis during a set-piece conference speech. As far back as 2007, then Tory Leader of the Opposition David Cameron painted a similar picture: “All of the Shadow Cabinet here, they can tell the same story of young people who come to our surgeries, they show you their salary, they talk about local house prices and they just say: ‘I don’t see how I can achieve that dream.’”

In government, the Conservatives have spent a decade striving to help us realise that aspiration, with progress supposedly always being made, but the dream remaining just out of reach – so much so that it has become something of a mainstay of conference speeches. Every passing year that the crisis remains unsolved provides a new opportunity for fresh promises to be made.

The Coalition government came to power in 2010 and enacted a stamp duty cut. The housing problem still remained, however, and in his 2011 conference speech Cameron pledged a “new Tory housing revolution”.

“Unless they get help from their parents, do you know the average age of a first-time buyer in our country today? Thirty-seven,” he said.

The following year, it was déjà vu all over again, with Cameron asking, “You know the average age that someone buys their first home today, without any help for their parents? Thirty-three years old.”

“There are young people who work hard year after year, but are still living at home. They sit in their childhood bedroom, looking out of the window, dreaming of a place of their own,” he said. “I want us to say to them: ‘You are our people, we are on your side, we will help you reach your dreams.’”

By 2013, the housing revolution was still a work in progress. Cameron said: “In a land of opportunity, more people must be able to own a home of their own. You know that old saying, ‘Your home is your castle’? Well, for most young people today, their home is their landlord’s. Generation Y is starting to become Generation Why Do We Bother?”

But he could at least paint a picture of a young couple who had been helped onto the housing ladder by his new Help to Buy policy.

The problem still hadn’t gone away, though, and in 2014 Cameron pledged, “For those wanting to buy a home, yes – we will help you get on that housing ladder… but only if we take on the vested interests, and build more homes – however hard that is.”

Building homes had become a key political issue by this point. In 2015, Cameron returned to the theme of people still living with their parents: “When a generation of hardworking men and women in their twenties and thirties are waking up each morning in their childhood bedrooms – that should be a wakeup call for us. We need a national crusade to get homes built.”

By 2016 it was Theresa May’s turn, and she admitted that while Help to Buy was “the right thing to do”, something wasn’t working. “We simply need to build more homes,” she said.

In her 2017 conference speech – the one marred by a husky voice and collapsing backdrop – May tried to make the housing crisis a career-defining issue: “I will dedicate my premiership to fixing this problem – to restoring hope. To renewing the British Dream for a new generation of people. And that means fixing our broken housing market. For 30 or 40 years, we simply haven’t built enough homes…”

Theresa May, 2018 conference speech: “We will help you get on the housing ladder. And we will build the homes this country needs.”

She went on to announce that the government will lift a cap on councils borrowing to build more houses, which was welcomed by the industry.

Boris Johnson’s first party conference as leader brought pledges to build more homes by turning neglected areas into viable places to live. “… If the streets are safe, and if the transport links are there, and if there are good broadband connections, you enable new housing to go ahead, on brownfield sites that were never considered viable before, we enable young people to get a foot on the housing ladder.”

That year, the National Audit Office found that most of the people who took advantage of Help to Buy would have been able to afford a home anyway, while the Public Accounts Committee reported that the scheme did not make housing more affordable or address the problems in the sector.

The pandemic has revealed a previously hidden social problem: apparently young people don’t live in very good housing. Johnson told the virtual party conference: “When COVID struck, there were millions of people, often young people, who found themselves locked down in rented accommodation, without private space, without a garden, forced to use ironing boards for desks and bedrooms for offices.”

Britain cannot return to the “old normal”, said Johnson. In addition to the recent stamp-duty cut, the government will turn generation rent into generation buy, he pledged, by offering “the chance to take out a long-term fixed rate mortgage of up to 95 percent of the value of the home, vastly reducing the size of the deposit, and giving the chance of home ownership – and all the joy and pride that goes with it – to millions that feel excluded”.

The problem is, the Local Government Association has found that proposed changes to planning regulations would drastically cut the number of affordable homes being built. And the housing gap – the difference between the housing stock and the amount needed for everyone to have a decent home – is already at one million.

James Forrester, managing director of estate agent Barrows & Forrester, told industry website Mortgage Strategy that the Tories’ new policy – which will fuel further demand, without providing any extra supply – is “not only laughable, but quite frankly an insult to those who find themselves priced out of homeownership”.

Progress has been made on a ten point green action plan to help tackle climate change in Devon, councillors have been told.

Daniel Clark – Local Democracy Reporter sidmouth.nub.news

Cllr Claire Wright

Last July, Devon County Council’s Environmental Performance Board were mandated to look into how the ten actions that were proposed by Cllr Claire Wright could be addressed.

Over a year on, Cllr Wright, at last Thursday’s full council meeting, asked for an update on the progress on the actions resulting from the plan.

Cllr Roger Croad, cabinet member for environmental services, said that while the huge demands of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic have, inevitably, affected the way the council has been able to take forward its planned action, more positively though it has been recognised that environmental objectives must underpin the plans for COVID recovery.

He said: “Given the huge imperative to support the Devon Climate Emergency, the Environmental Performance Board has deliberately prioritised effort to progress our DCC carbon reduction plan, as well as assisting in the development of the Devon Carbon Plan and Climate Impacts Plan.

“For this reason, formalising this broader approach to enhanced environmental action through a refreshed suite of action plans has not yet occurred, although opportunities for action are being pursued with vigour.”

Examples of recent progress that had been made, Cllr Croad said, included the recruitment to a new Ecologist position to help provide the required capacity to take forward actions from the DCC Pollinators Action Plan, and that Local Nature Partnership work on October Dark Skies Week will raise awareness of the impacts of lighting on insects and promote actions that people can take.

He added: “Work is progressing well, with significant input from the county council, on the Development Phase of ‘Saving Devon’s Treescapes’, with the first tree planting events starting in October.

“The council is working closely with other local authorities, the Woodland Trust, Local Nature Partnership and others to secure national funding to progress a ‘Trees for Devon’ initiative, which aims to increase tree cover in the county.

“The draft Action Plan to reduce the councils’s own water consumption has been taken forward through the cleaning-up of DCC account held with Pennon Group, analysis of data over a 3-year period, identification of the top 10 sites for water usage from size of building and the establishment of a Water Resources Management System to carry out surveys on those identified sites.

“The authority is also committed to refurbishing county farm dwellings to reflect the decent homes standard. Twenty refurbishments have been completed and a further six are in progress during 2020.”

A Devon NHS trust has stopped all non-urgent blood tests after supply chain problems at diagnostics firm Roche.

By Rachel Schraer Health reporter www.bbc.co.uk 

Doctors are being told to “think carefully” before ordering any tests for their patients, amid shortages caused by a supply chain failure at a major diagnostics company.

Swiss pharmaceutical firm Roche said problems with a move to a new warehouse had led to a “very significant” drop in its processing capacity.

A spokesman said Covid-19 tests would be prioritised.

But the backlog could affect tests including for cancer and heart disease.

One NHS trust in the south west has already advised its GPs to stop all non-urgent blood tests.

A memo seen by the BBC, sent to clinicians within a large hospital trust in London, said leaders were “preparing for a sustained disruption”.

“We urgently need all clinical teams to only send tests that are absolutely essential for immediate patient care, delaying testing where possible,” it said.

Thyroid and cortisol tests were unavailable, while certain cholesterol, liver function and inflammation tests were “severely restricted”.

In a statement, Roche said: “We deeply regret that there has been a delay in the dispatch of some products.

“We are prioritising the dispatch of Covid-19 PCR [diagnostic] and antibody tests and doing everything we can to ensure there is no impact on the supply of these to the NHS.”

It did not comment on the impact on other specific tests including for kidney, liver and thyroid function, sepsis and infection.

Tests rationed

Dr Tom Lewis, lead clinician for pathology at North Devon District Hospital, said his hospital’s trust had sent out communications that all non-urgent blood tests in the community should be stopped.

Without rationing these non-urgent tests, he said, they would run out of swabs in “three to four days”.

Even with rationing, essential equipment could run short by next week, he said.

A scientist at a major London hospital’s lab said they had already stopped doing thyroid tests, and expected an important test of liver function, and another for inflammation, to run out within the day.

All of the London labs are supplied by Roche, he said, with reagents – substances used to analyse test results – proving a particular problem.

Allan Wilson, president of the Institute of Biomedical Science, said if the problem continued for days “it probably will have minimal impact, but if it’s weeks then yes it could have a considerable impact on our ability to deliver tests,” across a whole range of conditions in the UK.

Which tests are affected?

The main issue appears to be with the supply of reagents – used to detect the presence of a substance whether that’s pregnancy hormones, blood glucose or coronavirus.

Because these have such wide application, the number of different diagnostic tests that could be affected is vast.

If you go to your GP with a hormonal imbalance, chest infection or sexually-transmitted infection (STI), your test will end up being processed in the lab using these materials.

If you’re admitted to hospital, you will have your electrolytes tested again relying on the same kind of materials. And your organ function may also be monitored in the same way.

Kit supplied by Roche is crucial in testing the health of your liver, heart and kidneys.

They also supply antibodies which are used in cancer diagnosis.

For NHS trusts which use the company as their main supplier of these types of diagnostic equipment, the work of whole departments could be at risk.

Roche initially told trusts it could take more than a fortnight to resolve the problem.

But a spokesperson later said they were confident there would be “significant improvements by the weekend” and that they would be “well on the way to resolution by the end of next week”.

Logistical issue

The company is one of the main suppliers of diagnostic testing equipment and materials in the UK.

The affected warehouse in West Sussex is Roche’s only distribution centre in the UK and covers the whole country.

In September it moved from another warehouse in East Sussex as part of its Brexit preparations, the BBC understands.

It is “not a problem with the volume of product available” but a logistical issue affecting their ability to distribute it, a spokesperson said.

Dr Lewis said perhaps most concerning was the shortage of electrolyte tests supplied by Roche, since these were “the key test” for critically ill patients, as well as being extremely commonly used by GPs to check people’s medications were safe.

One virologist in the Midlands tweeted that her service had not received Hepatitis C testing kits, and was now running short.

Materials used in cancer diagnostics could also be affected.

‘Unforeseen issues’

In a letter sent to NHS trusts, seen by the BBC, Roche said: “In September we moved from our old warehouse to a new automated warehouse capable of much higher volumes.

“However, during the transition we encountered some unforeseen issues and a very significant drop in our processing capacity. Since then we have worked around the clock to prioritise and manage orders as well as increase this capacity”.

The letter went on to advise local NHS services to “activate [their] local contingency plans” and “look to prioritise essential services only”.

But one clinician pointed out that local contingency plans often involve sending tests to a nearby lab, which in this case might also be affected.

An NHS spokesperson said:”Roche has alerted hospitals to an issue with their supply chain, and they will be working urgently to resolve this issue.”