There is now no clear difference between cities and the countryside when it comes to predicted COVID cases. London is no longer a key hotspot for predicted cases, and the latest hotspots are all spread out across the UK. 

Owl notes that both the Wales and Scotland Governments and their NHS support Tim Spector’s app and have been encouraging people to sign up but there appears to be no official backing from the UK Government – looks like a case of “Not Invented Here” to Owl. (Would be funny if it weren’t so serious a matter)

(Interactive map is worth a view. )  

Press release April 16th, 2020 covid.joinzoe.com

London, UK – The number of cases of predicted symptomatic COVID has fallen from 2 million to 582,640 in just over two weeks (01 April to 15 April) according to the latest data from the new COVID Symptom Tracker app. In Wales the figures dropped by 70% from 98,025 cases to 29,157 cases. In Scotland it fell by 73% from 137,583 to 36,723  (01 April to 15 April). However, the figures suggest there are still a large number of infectious people in the UK, which should be considered carefully before lifting the lockdown in the coming weeks. 

Developed by researchers at King’s College London and healthcare science company, ZOE, the COVID Symptom Tracker has also uncovered that there is now no clear difference between cities and the countryside when it comes to predicted COVID cases. London is no longer a key hotspot for predicted cases, and the latest hotspots are all spread out across the UK. 

The two current hotspots or areas that have not reduced as fast, as of today, are Corby (England) with 3.2% of people with symptomatic COVID (estimated) and Boston (Lincolnshire) with 3.1% of people with symptomatic COVID (estimated). All the latest figures are on the interactive map.

The research team at King’s College London and ZOE are working around the clock to analyse the data to generate new insights about the disease and its progression. For example, they have discovered that loss of smell or taste is common and an even stronger predictor of being tested positive for COVID-19 than fever. 

Lead researcher Professor Tim Spector from King’s College London, says, 

“It’s very reassuring to see that the number of predicted symptomatic COVID cases is continuing to fall day on day across the UK, but with deaths still high, this is definitely not the time for complacency. We believe our population symptoms are changing around two weeks before most people are admitted to hospital. The data from the app is giving us insight into just how common the virus is and how differently it affects people. We are learning something new each day, all of which is being shared directly with the NHS and health planners.”

“With the Government today announcing that it is extending the lockdown by three weeks, we urge the UK government to make sure it is using all the information it has to hand to prevent avoidable errors when the lift down does happen. What the data tell us is that there is still a large number of infectious people in the UK with mild symptoms, so to quickly lift the lockdown would not be appropriate. We are working closely with NHS Wales and NHS Scotland to explore how the app can be used to speed up and guide the lockdown lift. It can work as an early alert, before hospital testing, flagging up any particular spikes in new symptom cases.” 

“We would like to take this opportunity to thank every single person who is already participating, and would urge everyone else to download the app and check in every day, whether you are experiencing any symptoms or feeling fine. It takes us one minute a day for people to become part of the world’s largest stay at home science experiment and help the UK fight this virus.”

The app is supported by The Welsh Government, NHS Wales, The Scottish Government and NHS Scotland, all of which have been activity appealing to the public to download a new COVID Symptom Tracker app to help fight COVID-19.

Research methodology available here.

A design and access statement for the planning application, submitted by Clinton Devon Estates says the development would bring forward ‘much needed’ and affordable housing which will increase ‘viability’ of the village.

“Up to forty-three percent of the new homes will be ‘affordable’.” Owl hopes councillors who approved this application were aware of the great significance that they should have given to the two two-letter words “UP TO”. Anyone taking bets on the actual number?

Callum Lawton  www.midweekherald.co.uk

The homes will be built on land adjacent to Short Furlong.

The sloped site is 0.9 hectares and is adjacent to the established built-up area of Beer to the west of the settlement.

A design and access statement for the planning application, submitted by Clinton Devon Estates, said: “All houses are two to three storeys in height and are designed to step up or down the slope to accommodate levels.

“The proposed vehicular point of access off the existing Short Furlong has been identified on the eastern boundary of the site.

“The same access point will also serve pedestrians.”

The document said the development would bring forward ‘much needed’ and affordable housing which will increase ‘viability’ of the village.

Up to forty-three percent of the new homes will be ‘affordable’.

The dwellings will comprise four one-bed flats, four two-bed houses, 12 three-bed houses and ten four-bed houses.

This short article illustrates a Public Health England mindset that baffles Owl. 

Owl vividly remembers BBC news showing passengers disembarking from the last commercial flight to leave Wuhan before China imposed lockdown (around the end of January). They were being given a leaflet about symptoms etc but no one was collecting names or contact details or any information on where they were going. Similarly, neither GP’s nor NHS 111 are  keeping any record of who is/has self isolated with Covid symptoms.

Lack of recording, let alone testing, in the article below is explained as follows: “The epidemiological impact of keeping travel open is very small because there’s already large transmission here.” But aren’t we trying to reduce this to a minimum – Owl?

Only makes the eventual task of living with a manageable level of Covid-19 infection harder.

Graeme Paton  www.thetimes.co.uk

At least 15,000 people a day are flying into the UK without checks on their medical condition, the health secretary admitted yesterday.

Matt Hancock said that the equivalent of 105,000 passengers a week were entering the UK from countries including those with serious coronavirus outbreaks such as the US, China, Spain and Italy. Criticism has mounted over the failure to impose health checks or a compulsory period in quarantine for people arriving at UK airports. The US has banned entry for people from Britain and elsewhere in Europe.

The government has insisted that routine health screening for all passengers on arrival would do nothing to halt the spread of Covid-19 because of the scale of the outbreak in the UK. The incubation period of up to two weeks for infected people also means that testing often fails to identify sufferers.

This week it emerged that a second border force worker at Heathrow had died from coronavirus, prompting calls for personal protective equipment for all frontline workers. Yesterday Easyjet said that it expected to be forced to keep middle seats empty when flights resume to maintain social distancing. However, speaking on Good Morning Britain on ITV, Mr Hancock defended the government’s position.

“We don’t test at airports because the number of people coming through has dropped dramatically,” he said. “The epidemiological impact of keeping travel open is very small because there’s already large transmission here.”

 “The government has been too slow to enlist British textile firms to make protective gear for the NHS, according to industry figures, who say they have been desperate to contribute to the “war effort”.

Faced with a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), the Cabinet Office has only recently begun scrambling to source it from UK suppliers and has now outsourced the process to consultants from accountancy group Deloitte.

Industry figures said too much emphasis had been placed on high-profile names such as Burberry, the luxury fashion house that Matt Hancock said on 3 April was producing medical gowns.” (See below Owl)

‘I need gowns, can I call Burberry?’ NHS trust boss asks

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52319576

The director of a large NHS trust has contacted the BBC asking for the phone numbers of Burberry and Barbour because he does not have enough gowns for his staff working on coronavirus wards.

He said his trust had “less than 24 hours supply and [with the] weekend coming up” he was hugely concerned.

The trust is in the south of England but the BBC is not naming it.

The Department of Health said it was working “around the clock” to provide protective equipment where needed.

For a number of weeks, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and government ministers have said during press briefings and interviews that Burberry will begin making personal protective equipment (PPE) on behalf of the government as one of the answers to a critical shortage.

Burberry said at the end of March it would repurpose its trenchcoat factory in Castleford, West Yorkshire, to make non-surgical gowns and masks for hospital patients.

The government has been criticised for not providing enough PPE for NHS and other care workers to protect them while looking after patients with the virus.

Government ‘ignores’ UK textiles firms desperate to make PPE

Rob Davies www.theguardian.com

The government has been too slow to enlist British textile firms to make protective gear for the NHS, according to industry figures, who say they have been desperate to contribute to the “war effort”.

Faced with a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), the Cabinet Office has only recently begun scrambling to source it from UK suppliers and has now outsourced the process to consultants from accountancy group Deloitte.

Industry figures said too much emphasis had been placed on high-profile names such as Burberry, the luxury fashion house that Matt Hancock said on 3 April was producing medical gowns.

Kate Hills, the founder of Make It British, which promotes brands that manufacture in the UK, said the government was ignoring less well-known textile specialists in favour of household names that play well with the public. “They’re just picking out brand names,” she said.

“The people who can make this PPE are not well-known names, they are contract manufacturers behind the scenes. They’ve filled in the government’s request forms and heard nothing back.”

A separate source with knowledge of the fashion industry’s efforts said: “You can’t put all your eggs in that one Burberry basket.”

Hills said UK firms had been clamouring to help supply the NHS for more than a month, but that the government had instead focused on brands such as Burberry, as well as sourcing equipment from overseas.

“The number one priority was to secure anything already made that they could get on a plane from other countries. We don’t have the capacity and the products ready off the shelf because for years the NHS have been procuring products from cheap overseas suppliers.

“We have to put the supply chain back together from scratch. It’s almost as if there had to be a desperate need before they looked on their own doorstep.”

One major clothing supplier, who asked not to be named, said their firm had also struggled to get interest from the government. “The level that we’re scaling up is embarrassing. If the borders shut and we couldn’t bring in masks from China, we’d be screwed.”

The source said the process of getting protective clothing out to the NHS was mired in confusion from the government about the regulatory and testing regime for PPE.

Officials have been exploring ways to waive the usual regulatory requirements – as has happened with medical ventilators – but the process has been slow to get off the ground.

One difficulty with sourcing medical gowns is that they are typically made from fabric known as SMMS that combines two types of non-woven material, called meltblown and spunbond.

Amid a global shortage, the Scottish fabric specialist Don & Low received an order last week from the government for a spunbond laminate that would meet the same international standard.

Don & Low, which is based in Forfar, will eventually be able to make enough material for up to 1.5m gowns a month, but cannot reach full-scale production until May. The company is supplying the material to Burberry, among other companies, but has sent only trial fabrics to the fashion house so far.

Will Campbell, Don & Low’s sales manager, said: “You’re setting up a supply chain from the ground up. If you were doing this without a pandemic, you’d do it over a year or more. The fact that it’s been done in three weeks is fairly admirable.

“But you can’t get away from the fact that hospitals are running out of PPE.”

One of the few UK fashion houses that has already produced PPE is Barbour, which has delivered disposable gowns and medical scrubs from its South Shields factory to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Smaller suppliers have also been delivering their own homespun protective equipment to hospitals on a more ad hoc basis. They include the designer Patrick Grant, founder of the Community Clothing initiative, alongside projects called the Emergency Designer Network and ScrubHub.

The carmaker Nissan said on on Thursday that its Sunderland car plant, the UK’s largest, will deliver 100,000 face visors per week to the NHS.

The government-owned Royal Mint, in Llantrisant, south Wales, has been making medical visors for the NHS after developing a successful prototype to help protect frontline care workers.

A host of firms, including chemicals giant Ineos, beer firm Brewdog and several gin distilleries, have been producing hand sanitiser.

A government spokesperson said: “We are in discussions with a range of British firms on providing PPE for the NHS as well as sourcing it from abroad.

“The Cabinet Office has a dedicated team to help fast-track the regulatory approval process and has published the specifications for a wide range of items to support manufacturers to produce PPE, helping ensure equipment can reach health and social care workers as quickly as possible.”

The Guardian has approached Burberry for comment.

All seems a bit muddled to Owl. Is the blame game over the 100,000 testing target causing a diversion from focusing on real issues? Shouldn’t we be building a country-wide Public Health tracing and testing capability, based on the 5,000 contact tracing experts already employed by councils? 

“Almost half of Britain’s capacity is going to waste, with ministers risking a row with the health service by pinning responsibility on a “lack of demand” among frontline workers.”

Chris Smyth, Whitehall Editor | Kat Lay, Health Correspondent | Eleni Courea, Political Reporter www.thetimes.co.uk

Home coronavirus swab tests delivered by Amazon are being tested as a way out of lockdown amid finger-pointing over who is to blame for unused testing capacity.

Almost half of Britain’s capacity is going to waste, with ministers risking a row with the health service by pinning responsibility on a “lack of demand” among frontline workers.

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has pledged that 100,000 tests a day would be carried out by the end of the month. The government says that there is capacity to do 35,000 a day but only 18,665 tests were carried out in the 24 hours to 9am yesterday.

To boost the numbers the government is looking at testing other key workers such as the police, prison staff and firefighters, as well as studying whether more regular testing for some health staff is needed.

The Times understands that a pilot is beginning this week of a home-testing service using Amazon logistics that sends swabs to people’s homes and tells them to take a sample from their throats an hour before they are picked up. Results are sent back by text message, with the aim of completing the process in less than 48 hours. The scheme is separate from the attempt, so far unsuccessful, to find a home antibody test that shows who has recovered from the virus.

The pilot will begin with key workers. But with mass testing and contact tracing of suspected cases considered key to eventually exiting lockdown, the government wants to make the present swab test available to people self- isolating at home once restrictions start to be lifted.

The move comes amid frustration over why the capacity is not being fully used. Whitehall officials believe that all NHS staff who are self-isolating could be checked today if they came forward.

They have criticised health service delays in putting doctors and nurses forward, insisting that tests are available for those who need them, and hinting at a reluctance among some to be checked and return to the front line.

However, doctors’ leaders insist that demand outstrips supply, blaming a failure to make swabs convenient and available to staff, including by using drive-through centres that ill workers may find difficult to get to. They have also said that there is confusion about eligibility for testing.

The leader of the UK’s biggest farming organisation says she is optimistic that British workers will come forward to rescue the harvest and keep the nation fed, instead of having to rely on flying in overseas workers.

Fiona Harvey  www.theguardian.com 

“A lot of signs are optimistic and we have really positive news,” said Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union. “We are hearing people are very keen [to work on farms]. There does seem to be a real swell of support from people to do this.”

She said workers who had been furloughed were allowed to top up their income through farm work, and many others who had lost their jobs would see it as a lifeline, as well as a way to help the country through the coronavirus crisis.

Workers have been flown in this week on charter flights from Romania, despite travel restrictions and fears for their health and safety. Germany has also been recruiting farm workers by air from eastern Europe. About 80,000 workers are likely to be needed this year, leading to calls for a “land army” of paid workers to join farms.

Batters said there was still time for more people to sign up, as the critical period for the UK’s harvest would not begin until next month. “We will know much more when we get to May,” she said.

However, even if the labour shortages are less severe than some have predicted, farmers across the country are still facing a struggle to stay in business as their supply chains have been turned upside down by the coronavirus crisis.

For farmers, the biggest single problem is that before the lockdown about half of the food consumed in the UK was eaten outside the home, in cafes, restaurants and pubs. Now they are closed, supermarkets are struggling to keep up with demand for grocery shopping, but farmers used to supplying the catering trade have few ways of getting their produce to consumers. “It is very difficult, if not impossible, to switch,” said Batters.

Food must meet different standards when sold through supermarkets, and adapting the supply chain takes longer than farmers have to sell their perishable produce. “If you’re a potato farmer, and you sold to fish and chip shops, you can’t just start selling your produce direct. You can sell some at the end of the farm drive, but that’s only going to make a small difference,” said Batters.

Ministers have been slow to act, said Martin Lines, chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network. “We have heard very little from the government on how they will be supporting farmers to effectively make this transition and we urge them to look at appropriate ways to deliver a clear food delivery strategy that supports short, sustainable supply chains during the pandemic and beyond,” he said.

Selling directly to consumers remains difficult, even for farmers who have set up their business that way. Charlie Cole, a livestock farmer at Broughgammon farm in Northern Ireland, said: “It’s been an absolute nightmare. Our business is completely dependent on us selling directly to the customer. So now that the government restrictions are in place, the farmers’ markets and street food events have come to a close and we’ve had to shut the cafe in the farm shop, which are all usually reliable sources of income.”

The cancellation of Wimbledon means its strawberry supplier in Kent is faced with 33 tonnes of perishable soft fruit with no market. Marion Regan, whose great-grandfather established Hugh Lowe Farms in Kent in 1893 with a Covent Garden stall, is now looking at alternatives. “We will find a home for them,” she told the Oxford Farming Conference podcast. She said she was talking to food banks as well as commercial outlets.

The difference between what we eat at home and our tastes when eating out is also causing problems. Our love of mince is a menace to livestock farmers, who have seen the meat market collapse even while supermarkets have been stocking their shelves with meat imported from Poland. People are eating far more mince, which is cheap and comes from the tougher end of the animal, instead of the more expensive cuts, such as steak, that we tend to choose when eating out.

As farmers need to sell whole carcasses, they are forced to sell at far below the true value. “If everyone wants mince, the carcass is massively devalued,” said Batters. “People want to buy British beef. If it has to be mince, OK, but you must balance the carcass [if necessary by mincing prime cuts] and stabilise the price, or people will go out of business.”

Coffee shops used to account for a large proportion of the UK’s fresh milk sales, but when drinking at home people tend not to make the milky cappuccinos and lattes that they would buy when out. Dairy farmers are seeing prices so low that some have been throwing fresh milk down the drain without a buyer to collect it from the farm.

Supermarkets imposed buying limits to stop people stocking up on some items, including milk and eggs. But Batters said there was no reason for limiting the amount of dairy produce people can purchase as there was no shortage of supply.

Small farmers were most at risk from the crisis, Batters warned, as they had less to fall back on and were finding it hard to gain credit extensions from their banks.

Farmers who diversified, as they were urged to, into side businesses such as running B&Bs are also finding those sources drying up. “Normally we would make £7,000 off tourism per year, but that income is going to vanish,” said Polly Davies, a tenant farmer in Glamorgan.

Batters will urge ministers at a virtual meeting on Friday to give British farmers a boost by mandating all food bought by public bodies, including the NHS and the army, to come from British producers.

“The government has a key role to play that needs to be recognised,” she said. “If there is to be a positive legacy from this crisis, let’s build a more resilient economic future – paying attention to our food and our health, and buying local food, is a key part of that.”

Owl understands that If you have COVID-19 symptoms but are not ill enough to require hospital treatment and are not an NHS worker nor live in the same household as one, then you will not be tested in uk as of now.

Emirates says it has become the first airline in the world to offer its passengers pre-flight coronavirus testing, with the results available in just 10 minutes.

Emirates ‘world’s first airline’ to carry out pre-flight coronavirus tests

Hugh Morris, Travel news editor www.telegraph.co.uk

Dubai’s state-owned carrier worked with the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) to conduct the Covid-19 testing in the check-in area of terminal three of Dubai International Airport for those travelling on a service to Tunisia on Wednesday. 

Emirates said it intends to extend the program to other flights, allowing passengers travelling to countries that require coronavirus test certificates for entry to gain confirmation before flying.

The airline did not reveal the results of Wednesday’s testing, how many people travelled or whether if a passenger tested positive they would be denied boarding. The flight was operated on one of Emirates’ Boeing 777 aircraft, capable of carrying more than 300 passengers. 

The blood test is likely to check for antibodies and may not be a reliable indicator of whether someone is currently infected with coronavirus

“We are working on plans to scale up testing capabilities in the future and extend it to other flights,” said chief operating office Adel Al Redha, adding: “The health and safety of staff and passengers at the airport remain of paramount importance.”

The introduction raises the prospect of more airlines following suit in a bid to help restore flight schedules. Carriers around the world are feeling the financial hit of having to cancel tens of thousands of flights and ground fleets amid the pandemic lockdown; Emirates has cancelled up to 70 per cent of its flights.

Emirates also said it is requiring passengers to wear their own masks at the airport and on board the plane. It said gloves, masks and hand sanitisers have been made mandatory for all employees, too. 

Magazines and other reading material have been removed from the flight and passengers are no longer allowed to take cabin bags on-board, with all luggage to be checked. The airline said all aircraft are undergoing “enhanced cleaning and disinfection processes in Dubai after each journey”.

The United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, has registered just under 5,000 cases of coronavirus, and 28 deaths. It has carried out nearly 650,000 tests, giving it the third highest testing rate of its population in the world, behind just Iceland and the Faroe Islands; the UK has carried out just 400,000 tests.

The UAE has a population of just 9.6 million but boasts one of the world’s busiest transport hubs. Dubai International is the fifth busiest airport in the world, welcoming 86.3 million passengers last year. 

Humaid Al Qutami, director general of the DHA, said: “To tackle COVID-19, we have been proactively working with various governmental organisations and the private health sector and we have implemented all necessary measures from public health protection to provision of high-quality health services in line with the latest international guidelines.”

Owl hopes the Devon and Cornwall MPs who supported the #pleasecomebacklater campaign in such a timely manner will also back this campaign, based on the expert advice of Dr Bharat Pankhania of Exeter University’s medical school. 

Dr Bharat Pankhania says contact tracing, isolation and testing should be introduced ‘as a matter of urgency’ in the south west, north west, north east, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Owl urges readers to contact their MPs as well. 

Devon councillors urge MPs to press for a regional approach to tackling Covid-19

Philippa Davies  www.sidmouthherald.co.uk 

Three Devon county councillors, including Otter Valley representative Claire Wright, are supporting the call by an infectious disease and public health expert.

Dr Bharat Pankhania of Exeter University’s medical school believes that effective control of the disease in the least affected parts of the country would be an important step towards a national solution.

He said contact tracing, isolation and testing should be introduced ‘as a matter of urgency’ in the south west, north west, north east, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The councillors, Hilary Ackland (Exeter), Martin Shaw (Seaton and Colyton) and Claire Wright, have released a joint statement, which said: “The south west is experiencing the epidemic in a different way from other regions.

“We have the lowest levels of hospitalisation and death from Covid-19 in the country.

“South west councils, MPs and the police have had some success in preventing second-home owners and tourists further spreading the virus.

“We therefore support the call by Dr Bharat Pankhania, Exeter University’s infectious disease and public health expert, to take advantage of the lockdown to introduce a regional approach to the epidemic in the south west, with intensive testing, tracing and quarantining to eliminate the virus.

“We call on Directors of Public Health in the region to devote all available resources to this approach, and on Devon MPs to press the Government to give the necessary support for this.

“While we do not believe the lockdown can be lifted imminently, effective control of the epidemic in the south west would be an important step forward towards a national solution, and would enable local leaders to make the case for a regional approach to lifting the lockdown in due course.”

Cllr Shaw added: “As of two days ago, 21 people had died of Covid in the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital Trust, compared to almost 200 in many trusts in other regions.

“This shows that the epidemic is still very uneven – a patchwork of variable local epidemics, as Dr Pankhania has argued in the British Medical Journal.

“We should press for an effective south west strategy.”

Across Devon as a whole there have been 84 deaths from the coronavirus in the four main hospitals. The official figures provided by NHS England do not include deaths in care homes or the wider community.

Twelve lessons to learn (quite a long read) – is that too many for our Politicians? 

Fascinating time to be Owl: slow decisions, poor decisions, good decisions, weak leaders, strong and decisive leaders all exposed like lab rats in the laboratory by Covid-19 within weeks.

No place to hide.

As governments fumbled their coronavirus response, these four got it right. Here’s how.

Angela Dewan, Henrik Pettersson and Natalie Croker,  London (CNN) edition.cnn.com 

Like a line of dominoes, country after country has been shut down by the novel coronavirus. Despite signs the threat was making its way across the globe, there was a clear pattern of response in many parts of the world — denial, fumbling and, eventually, lockdown.

In our globalized world, it’s puzzling that so few lessons were learned in the early weeks of each country’s outbreak, when the chances of containing and stopping the virus were highest. Now the focus is on flattening the curve, or slowing the virus’ spread, to keep death tolls from climbing further.

As much of the world mulls gradually lifting lockdowns, there are still lessons to be learned from these four places that got it right. Here are 12 of those lessons.

Sitting just 180 kilometers (110 miles) off the coast of mainland China, Taiwan’s outbreak could have been disastrous. At the end of January, the island was estimated to have had the second-highest number of cases in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU). 

But Taiwan, with a population of around 24 million people, has recorded just over 390 cases and six deaths, and yesterday, it reported no new cases at all. It’s managed to do that without implementing severe restrictions, like lockdowns, or school and nursery closures.

In terms of its death toll, at least, Taiwan doesn’t even have much of a curve to flatten, more of a line with a couple of rigid steps.

Compare that to the United States — now the world’s hardest-hit nation, at least in raw numbers — which has reported at least 26,000 deaths. Even when you take population size into account, a level of success like Taiwan’s could have meant just 83 deaths in the US.

Although Taiwan has high-quality universal health care, its success lies in its preparedness, speed, central command and rigorous contact tracing.

Lesson #1: Be prepared

Taiwan’s preparedness came largely from some hard-learned lessons from the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, which killed 181 people on the island.

As a result, the island established a specialized Central Epidemic Command Center, which could be activated to coordinate a response in the event of an outbreak. In a sign of how Taiwan wanted to get ahead of the coronavirus, the center was activated on January 20, a day before the island even confirmed its first infection.

Because its authority was already established, the center was able to implement stringent measures without being slowed down by lengthy political processes. It put more than 120 action items into place within three weeks, according to a list published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). That list alone could serve as a manual on exactly what to do during an outbreak.

Lesson #2: Be quick

Taiwan’s action came well before its first Covid-19 infection was confirmed on January 21. Three weeks before, within days of China’s first reported case to the World Health Organization (WHO), Taiwanese officials began boarding and inspecting passengers for fever and pneumonia symptoms on flights from Wuhan, the original epicenter of the virus in China. The island issued a travel alert for Wuhan on January 20, and two days later, still with just a single case, officials began updating the public in daily briefings.

A week after its first case, Taiwan began electronic monitoring of quarantined individuals via government-issued cell phones, and announced travel and entry restrictions, mostly targeting China’s Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital. Just about every day after until the end of February, the government implemented new measures to keep the virus at bay.

Taiwan had only 329 cases when it imposed strict social distancing measures on April 1. In comparison, there were already 335 deaths and more than 3,000 cases on March 20, when Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that pubs and restaurants were to close, and that most children would be pulled from schools and nurseries. And as the UK is not testing widely, the true number of infections is believed to be much higher than official figures show.

Lesson #3: Test, trace and quarantine

Authorities carried out widespread testing and tracing the contacts of infected people, putting them all under quarantine. It proactively tested anyone who got off cruise ships and even retested people diagnosed with influenza or pneumonia, to make sure they hadn’t been misdiagnosed and were infected with coronavirus.

Lesson #4: Use data and tech

“A coordinated government response with full collaboration of its citizenry [was] combined with the use of big data and technology,” associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine, Jason Wang, told CNN. Wang has also studied public health policy and co-authored the JAMA report on Taiwan’s response.

Taiwan merged national health insurance data with customs and immigration databases to create real-time alerts to help identify vulnerable populations.

“Having a good health data system helps with monitoring the spread of the disease and allows for its early detection. When someone sees a physician for respiratory symptoms, the national health insurance database will have a record of it. It is easier to track clusters of outbreaks,” Wang said.

Taiwan used mandatory online reporting and check-ins for 14 days after travel restrictions. It also employed “digital fencing” for close to 55,000 people in home quarantine, where alarms would sound if a quarantined person wandered too far from home. The technical surveillance methods used in Taiwan and by other governments have raised privacy concerns from civil society groups.

Iceland

Getting a coronavirus test in many countries can be near impossible, unless you’re already very ill. Not so in Iceland, where anyone who wants a test gets one. Widespread testing has been crucial to the country’s low number of infections and deaths, authorities there say. Only around 1,700 people have been infected in Iceland, and only eight have died.

Lesson #5: Be aggressive

Iceland’s response to the coronavirus hasn’t been particularly innovative. It’s just been meticulous and quick. Like Taiwan, its speed has meant it hasn’t had to be too restrictive — people can still meet in groups of up to 20, if they stay two meters away from each other. While universities are closed, schools and nurseries are still open, allowing more parents to work.

“From the beginning, since we diagnosed our first case, we worked according to our plan. Our plan was to be aggressive in detecting and diagnosing individuals, putting them into isolation, and to be very aggressive in our contact tracing. We used the police force and the healthcare system to sit down and contact trace every newly diagnosed case,” Iceland’s chief epidemiologist Thorolfur Gudnason told CNN.

“We are finding that above 60% of new cases are in people already quarantined. So that showed that contact tracing and quarantining contacts was a good move for us,” Gudnason said.

Lesson #6: Get the private sector involved

In a public-private partnership between the National University Hospital of Iceland and biotech company deCODE Genetics, Iceland designed tests early and expects to have tested 10% of its population by the end of this week. It aims to test just about everyone and has already become a valuable laboratory for the world to learn more about the novel virus.

Recent revelations that 50% of the people who tested positive in a lab in Iceland showed no symptoms at all, for example, has prompted other countries to take firmer action through social distancing, as they begin to realize preventing the virus’ spread will be more challenging than initially thought.

Kári Stefánsson, CEO and director of deCODE Geneticsm, told CNN that as of Monday, it had found 528 mutations of the coronavirus in mass testing in the community. These mutations could give insight to how lethal the virus becomes and offers important data to the world to better understand how it operates.

Lesson #7: Act preventatively

Icelandic Health Minister Svandís Svavarsdóttir has emphasized speed as a powerful tool, saying the approach is to stay “ahead of the curve.” The country appears to have done just that. After just six imported cases were confirmed on March 3, Iceland immediately issued quarantine measures for all travelers returning from Italy, and increased travel restrictions in the following weeks.

The National Police Commissioner declared a state of emergency on March 6, when the first two community-transmitted infections were confirmed. This sent a signal to government bodies to improve their preparedness, but it kept public gatherings as they were, only warning vulnerable people to stay away from crowded places.

The country closed universities and junior colleges on March 13 and banned gatherings of more than 100 people on March 16, when it had just 61 confirmed cases and not a single death.

Three days later, all Icelandic residents that entered the country were required to go into 14 days of quarantine, regardless of where they were traveling from.

It wasn’t until after all this action that, on March 24, Iceland’s first death was reported. That same day, authorities banned gatherings of above 20 people and shut down public amenities, such as bars, swimming pools, museums and gyms.

Lesson #8: Use tech, but respect privacy

Like in Taiwan, Icelandic officials also made an app available for people to download to help chart the virus’ spread. It creates a log of where the user has been. Users don’t have to share that data with authorities — but many do as it helps contact-tracing teams work out who may have been put at risk.

In comparison, the UK’s response has been slow. A government-supported app is only now in the works and is weeks away from launching. As it lags behind in testing, it is only just now looking into public-private partnerships.

South Korea

It’s telling that South Korea reported its first coronavirus case at around the same time as the US and UK. South Korea is confirming around 30 new cases a day, while in the UK it’s around 5,000, and the US it’s more than 20,000.

The way each country tests varies, but their death rates among the population contrast just as dramatically. Fewer than one in every 100,000 people in South Korea’s population have died from the virus, while in the UK it’s around 18. It’s almost eight in every 100,000 in the US, JHU data shows.

Lesson #9: You can drive-through test

South Korea’s success has been largely down to its testing, according to Dr. Eom Joong Sik from the Gil Medical Center near Seoul. Eom is treating coronavirus patients in hospital and sits on a committee that advises the government in its response.

“Early diagnosis, early quarantine and early treatment are key,” he told CNN.

“Since the first patient was confirmed, by installing more than 500 screening clinics all over the country, we sorted suspected cases and conducted tests, and we have worked hard to develop and maintain a system to conduct many tests with a small workforce over a short period of time,” he said.

The country has also been innovative in how it tests. Eom’s advisory team had hundreds of drive-through booths, just like at a McDonald’s, set up across the country to offer tests that were largely free, quick and done by staff at a safe distance. The US has since replicated that model in some states.

On March 16, the WHO called on governments of the world to “test, test, test.” South Korea had already been doing that for weeks, and has to date tested more than 500,000 people, among the highest number in the world per capita.

Many countries are struggling to carry out thousands of tests each day. It’s so difficult to get tested in the UK, for example, that people have been turning to mail-order kits, in an industry that hasn’t yet been regulated by the government.

South Korea was also quick to move, implementing quarantining and screening measures for people arriving from Wuhan on January 3, more than two weeks before the country’s first infection was even confirmed. Authorities rolled out a series of travel restrictions over the weeks after.

South Korea has also been rigorous in its contact tracing, though it was able to do that easily when it realized a large number of cases could be traced to one religious group in the city of Daegu, making contact tracing easier and giving authorities a specific area to carry out intensive testing.

“By carrying out tests on all members of the congregation and diagnosing even infected people without symptoms, the government carried out quarantine and treatment side by side,” Eom said.

Once Daegu was established as the epicenter, authorities were ready with the ability and political will to test broadly, to trace contacts of people infected, and to quarantine them to try and contain the virus before it became a case of mitigating widescale death, as is now the case in much of Europe and the US.

Lesson #10: Learn from the past

South Korea was able to move quickly because, like Taiwan and many other Asian nations, it had been burned before. South Korea was mostly unaffected by the SARS outbreak, only reporting three cases and no deaths at all. But it was caught off guard by the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in 2015, when it recorded 186 cases and 38 deaths, making it the worst-impacted country outside the Middle East.

So the political will needed to enforce measures during the coronavirus outbreak wasn’t a problem and there was good coordination between the central government and the provinces.

It also helped that South Korea is one of the most technologically innovative countries in the world. Much of life there is already conducted online, so developing and enforcing the use of an app to monitor people in quarantine wasn’t too difficult, though activists there too have warned of invasion of privacy.

Germany

Germany’s case is a little different. The country hasn’t really been able to keep infection numbers at bay much better than some of the hardest-hit nations. It currently has more than 132,000 confirmed infections, the fifth-highest in the world, JHU reports.

But Germany has been able to keep the death rate in its population relatively low. More than 3,400 people have died from the virus in Germany, around four people in every 100,000 across the country. That’s well below Italy’s 35 and the UK’s 18.

Lesson #11: Test more as restrictions ease

Germany’s success has also been its mass testing, but its well-resourced universal healthcare system has played a major role too, according to Martin Stürmer, a virologist who heads IMD Labor in Frankfurt, one of the labs conducting tests. Germany has also drawn in the private sector to make sure enough tests are carried out.

“From the beginning, Germany didn’t stick to one or two or three central labs doing all the tests. Many private companies were involved, so we’ve been able to do 100,000 tests a day,” Stürmer told CNN.

“There are some countries that have done it even better than Germany, in controlling infections, but what’s quite important is broad testing, where we were able to see what was happening in our population. Only with mass testing can you identify people who might be infected.”

Like Taiwan, South Korea and Iceland, Germany devised a test for the coronavirus and prepared a large number of kits early, well before the country even reported its first death.

As German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Wednesday that the country would begin gradually scaling back its lockdown, the country is planning on carrying out even more tests, in case the increased contact leads to a second wave of infections. Like many countries, it will also test for antibodies to try and determine who among the community may be immune to the virus.

Germany’s death toll has remained relatively low in part because the coronavirus trickled into the country mostly in young people. Many had been visiting Italy or Austria on ski trips.

Authorities were able to test people returning to Germany from these ski resorts and trace their contacts for testing too. Most of those people were young, and still today, the biggest age group by infections is 35-59, followed by 15-34. The virus is proving to be deadlier among the elderly around the world.

But as communal infections in the country grow, Stürmer fears that more elderly people could die in coming weeks and that the country’s death rate will go up.

Germany recorded 315 deaths from complications related to Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, the country’s center for disease control, the Robert Koch Institute, wrote on its website on Thursday. This is the first time more than 300 deaths have been reported in a 24-hour span.

Lesson #12: Build capacity at hospitals

Germany ranks 18th in the world in terms of access to quality healthcare, according to an index published by The Lancet, sitting above the UK at 23rd and the US at 29th. But these indices only tell us so much. Italy, for example, ranks ninth and the country also carried out rigorous testing, yet it has recorded the second-highest number of deaths per capita in the world, after Spain.

In this situation, the difference appears to be the German healthcare system’s huge capacity. Germany is projected to need about 12,000 beds at the peak of this outbreak in the middle of the month, according to projections from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. It has over 147,000, more than 10 times its need.

In contrast, the US has around 94,000 beds, some 15,000 beds short of its need. Germany has more spare beds in intensive care units that Italy has altogether.

In fact, Germany’s health system has such a large capacity, its hospitals are now treating people for coronavirus from Italy, Spain and France.

Authorities have been able to get people with even moderate symptoms to hospital well before their conditions deteriorate, leading some experts to consider whether treating people early, getting them on ventilators before their condition worsens, for example, improves their chances for survival.

“Germany is not in a situation where the healthcare system is overloaded, like you see in Italy, where they need to decide whether to treat a patient or not. We don’t have that,” Stürmer said.

Different story on a care home in the South Hams to that in East Devon

www.totnes-today.co.uk

A Dartmouth care home has reopened to take patients discharged from hospital to help relieve pressure on the county’s NHS hospitals.

The Fleet care home, formerly known as the Riverview, was due to reopen later in the year to provide nursing care in the local community, but the decision to open it immediately, and with potentially more bed capacity, was escalated by Devon County Council as part of its response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Only patients in need of specialist care are being kept in hospitals. Other patients are being discharged safely to ensure hospitals have more capacity to deal with those who are acutely ill, including patients suffering from Covid-19.

Devon County Council is making sure there are enough places for people to move to when they leave hospital. Most return home, but some require more support until they are a bit better.

Residential and nursing homes, which may otherwise be an option for them, are also under a lot of pressure to meet demand, and the authority is working with organisations that have accommodation with a view to these places being used temporarily by people when they can leave hospital.

The Fleet Care Home was due to open this year with 14 nursing care beds, but it will now open imminently with the potential to increase capacity by an extra 24 beds temporarily for people being discharged from hospital or moving in from home due to ill-health.

The council is also in discussion with a hotel owner in Bideford about opening up similar accommodation for discharged patients.

Alongside the potential Bideford facility, and the Hilton Hotel at Exeter Airport, which is already taking people discharged from hospital, the three facilities would provide an extra 200 beds, staffed by trained and experienced health and care professionals.

Councillor Andrew Leadbetter, the cabinet member responsible for adult social care, said: “These will be for people who do not need to be in acute hospitals, but who require extra care before returning home or until residential or nursing places can be found for them.

“They can also be used by people with care needs who have been living at home, but who can no longer do so – if their carer becomes unwell, for example. We are doing absolutely everything we can to ensure that people in Devon continue to receive the care and support they need.”

Lee Baxter, associate director at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust said:

“We are working in partnership with all providers to ensure we can deliver the best possible care during the pandemic.

“As a key part of this we are working closely with Devon County Council to ensure we have facilities and accommodation available to keep NHS beds available for those who may need them at this time.

“We are very pleased to be working with Fleet as part of this approach.”

Anthony Mangnall, MP for the Totnes constituency, which includes Dartmouth, has welcomed the decision to bring forward the reopening of The Fleet, following several months of discussions and meetings. He said:“I am delighted to hear that The Fleet will be reopening this week.

“Dartmouth’s healthcare services have been of huge importance to me and I raised this issue with the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, when he visited in late 2019.

“Ensuring that Dartmouth is not cut off when it comes to its healthcare provisions has been a top priority and I am pleased with today’s announcement.

“I have been working with Devon County Council and the Clinical Commissioning Group to ensure that residents not only have reassurance when it comes to their healthcare services but that access across rural and urban areas is as comprehensive as possible.

“I will continue to work with local and national groups to maintain these provisions as we tackle COVID-19.”

Dartmouth’s county councillor Jonathan Hawkins, added: “I am very pleased that this building is being bought back into use and that it is going to be a nursing home that

Dartmouth and the surrounding parishes have been calling for a nursing home for many years so this is very welcome.”

Melody Walters, regional manager for Care Concern Group, which own the Fleet said.

“The team has worked tremendously hard to bring the opening of the home forward, they all feel very proud to be helping the local community during these trying times, and are looking forward to providing the new residents with a caring and luxurious environment.”

The Fleet Care Home in Dartmouth will have 14 beds and has the capacity to provide 24 more if needed.

Devon County Council says this will ease the pressure on district hospitals who should only be dealing with people who are acutely ill in the coronavirus outbreak.

Dartmouth Area Healthcare Action Group asked why the former community hospital, closed in March 2017, was not brought back into use instead of paying for private care.

Solveig Samson from Devon County Council said Fleet was a better than the “clinical” atmosphere of a hospital.

“A community hospital is for short-term nursing care but a nursing home is for long-term care,” she said.

“It’s better for them to have their nursing are needs met in something much closer to a normal home rather than in a hospital.

“I can see where there could be confusion but its a differet type of care need.”

Owl wonders if Councillor Christine Channon and Chris Davis, who advised her, in late January that the Shandford Care home in Budleigh was not “viable”, had known Covid-19 was coming, would they have tried harder to keep it open? Do they have any regrets, now the full consequences of their fateful decision are becoming exposed?

Owl has previously reported that a different group of local experts, with very relevant professional experience, believed there were strong grounds to challenge the case for non-viability.

The local community, given time, had also expressed the will and energy to re-create a local Community Interest Company to take over and run Shandford but has been denied access to essential information.

Daniel Clark Local Democracy Reporting Service BBC

A second facility has opened in Devon to take patients discharged from hospital to help relieve pressure on the county’s hospitals. 

The Hilton Hotel at Exeter Airport is already taking people discharged from hospital and now the Fleet care home in Dartmouth, formerly known as the Riverview, is also to be used to help relieve the pressure. 

It will open imminently with the potential to increase capacity by an extra 24 beds temporarily for people being discharged from hospital or moving in from home due to ill-health. 

Devon County Council is also in discussion with a hotel owner in Bideford – named last week as the Durrant House Hotel – about opening up similar accommodation for discharged patients. 

Alongside the potential Bideford facility and the Hilton, which is already taking people, the three facilities would provide an extra 200 beds, staffed by trained and experienced health and care professionals. 

Cllr Andrew Leadbetter, Devon County Council’s Cabinet Member responsible for adult social care, said: “These will be for people who do not need to be in acute hospitals, but who require extra care before returning home or until residential or nursing places can be found for them. 

“They can also be used by people with care needs who have been living at home, but who can no longer do so – if their carer becomes unwell, for example. We are doing absolutely everything we can to ensure that people in Devon continue to receive the care and support they need.” 

The work is part of Devon County Council’s coronavirus (Covid-19) response.

Statement by County Councillors Hilary Ackland (Exeter), Martin Shaw (Seaton and Colyton) and Claire Wright (Otter Valley):

“The South West is experiencing the epidemic in a different way from other regions. We have the lowest levels of hospitalisation and death from Covid-19 in the country. South West councils, MPs and the police have had some success in preventing second-home owners and tourists further spreading the virus.  

We therefore support the call by Dr Bharat Pankhania, Exeter University’s infectious disease and public health expert, to take advantage of the lockdown to introduce a regional approach to the epidemic in the South West, with intensive testing, tracing and quarantining to eliminate the virus.  

We call on Directors of Public Health in the region to devote all available resources to this approach, and on Devon MPs to press the Government to give the necessary support for this.

While we do not believe the lockdown can be lifted imminently, effective control of the epidemic in the South West would be an important step forward towards a national solution and would enable local leaders to make the case for a regional approach to lifting the lockdown in due course.”

For further information contact:

Martin Shaw

Independent East Devon Alliance County Councillor for Seaton & Colyton  07972 760254

https://seatonmatters.org/

“It’s now clear that so many people have died, and so many more are desperately ill, simply because our politicians refused to listen to and act on advice. Scientists like us said lock down earlier; we said test, trace, isolate. But they decided they knew better.”

Helen Ward is professor of public health at Imperial College London www.theguardian.com

In mid-February a colleague mentioned that for the first time in his life he was more concerned than his mother, who had been relatively blase about the risks of Covid-19. It felt odd for him to be telling her to take care. We are both professors in a department of infectious disease epidemiology, and we were worried.

Two months on, that anxiety has not gone, although it’s also been joined by a sense of sadness. It’s now clear that so many people have died, and so many more are desperately ill, simply because our politicians refused to listen to and act on advice. Scientists like us said lock down earlier; we said test, trace, isolate. But they decided they knew better.

Am I being unfair? The government assures us that its decisions and timing are based on science, as if it is a neutral, value-free process resulting in a specific set of instructions. In reality, the science around coronavirus is in its infancy and developing daily, with researchers across the world trying to understand how the virus spreads, how the body responds – and how to treat it and control it. The speed at which our knowledge has increased is impressive, from the sequencing of the virus in January through to having candidate vaccines in early February.

Mathematical models are being refined to predict the extent and speed of spread and estimate the impact of control methods. My own group is studying the response of communities, showing how the epidemic is amplifying existing social inequalities. People with the lowest household income are far less likely, but no less willing, to be able to work from home or to self-isolate.

But while scientists carry out observations and experiments, testing, iterating and discovering new knowledge, it is the role of policymakers to act on the best available evidence. In the context of a rapidly growing threat, that means listening to experts with experience of responding to previous epidemics.

When I say that politicians “refused to listen”, I am referring to the advice and recommendations coming from the World Health Organization, from China and from Italy. The WHO advice, based on decades of experience and widely accepted by public health leaders and scientists around the world was clear – use every possible tool to suppress transmission. That meant testing and isolating cases, tracing and quarantining contacts, and ramping up hygiene efforts.

The UK did well in the early phase, but then, on 12 March, the government alarmed many public health experts by abruptly abandoning containment and announcing that community case-finding and contact-tracing would stop. The aim was no longer to stop people getting it, but to slow it down while protecting the vulnerable.

The evidence underpinning the government’s decision appears in a report from 9 March summarising the potential impact of behavioural and social interventions. The report did not consider the impact of case-finding and contact-tracing, but it did suggest that the biggest impact on cases and deaths would come from social distancing and the protection of vulnerable groups.

And yet social distancing was not recommended then. That day, 12 March, after hearing with disbelief the government announcement that didn’t include widespread social distancing, I recommended to my team at Imperial that they should work from home for the foreseeable future. Indeed, I have not been to my office since.

Neither the advice nor the science were followed that week. My colleagues, led by Neil Ferguson, published a report on 16 March estimating that without strong suppression, 250,000 people could die in the UK. The government responded that day with a recommendation for social distancing, avoiding pubs and working from home if possible. But there was still no enforcement, and it was left up to individuals and employers to decide what to do. Many people were willing but unable to comply as we showed in a report on 20 March. It was only on 23 March that a more stringent lockdown and economic support was announced.

Between 12 and 23 March, tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people will have been infected. Boris Johnson himself may well have been infected that week, and his stay in the intensive care unit may have been avoided if the government had shifted to remote working on 12 March. The current best estimate is that around 1% of those infected will die.

So where to now? Once again, public health experience, including modelling, leads to some very clear recommendations. First, find cases in the community as well as hospitals and care homes; isolate them, and trace their contacts using a combination of local public health teams and digital tools.

Second, know your epidemic. Track the epidemic nationally and locally using NHS, public health and digital surveillance to see where cases are continuing to spread. This will be essential so that we can start to lift the lockdown while shielding the population from hotspots of transmission. Build community resilience by providing local support for vulnerable people affected by the virus and the negative impact of the control measures.

Third, ensure transmission is suppressed in hospitals, care homes and workplaces through the right protective equipment, testing, distancing and hygiene. Investigate the differential effects on black and minority ethnic groups, and provide appropriate protection.

Fourth, ensure that the most vulnerable, socially and medically, are fully protected through simple access to a basic income, rights for migrants, and safety for those affected by domestic violence.

Many, including the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, say that now is not the time for blame. I am not looking to blame – but for scrutiny so that lessons can be learned to guide our response. We need to avoid further mistakes, and ensure that the government is hearing, and acting on, the best advice.

EDDC Leader Ben Ingham also says: “We must do everything we can to control the Covid-19 virus and save lives.”

Before posting the full text of his welcome to the Nightingale, Owl thought it might be helpful to illustrate how the speed with which Covid-19 rips through our population sorts Leaders from Followers.

Just for the purposes of illustration, Owl will nominate the day when Cornwall Council and its Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) asked visitors to stay away from the County as K-day (K for Kernow). At the time the estimated transmission rate for Covid-19 was given as doubling every three to four days. Owl will take the slower, four days, for illustration. In the events catalogued below the dates given may not correspond with decision dates because of delays in publication.

K-day (20 March)  Cornwall calls for visitors to stay away

K+2 Group of Devon and Cornwall MP’s back the #pleasestayaway campaign, Devon and Cornwall Police declare a ‘major incident‘.( infections now 1.4 times those on K-day i.e. an increase of 40% )

K+3 Government imposes lock down, Devon County Council says enforcement will be removed from many parking places including coastal and tourist destinations. (Infections now 70% up on K-day)

K+6 EDDC Winter car parking rates extended until May across East Devon reported “in order to better support town centre businesses” (Infections are now 2.8 times those of K-day)

K+12  Devon County Council “This afternoon (Wednesday, April 1) issued an all-party message for visitors to ‘stay away from the South West’ ahead of the Easter weekend.” (Infections are 8 times those of K-day)

K+16 EDDC Leader Ben Ingham goes on spotlight to back the please stay at home campaign (Infections are now 16 times those of K-day)

New Nightingale Hospital serving East Devon welcomed by council leader

Joseph Bulmer  sidmouth.nub.news

The creation of a new Nightingale hospital serving East Devon and Exeter has been welcomed by the district’s council leader.

A new NHS Nightingale Hospital will be opened in Westpoint Exeter to provide 200 extra beds for patients with coronavirus symptoms if needed.

The NHS Nightingale Hospital Exeter, announced by NHS Chief Executive, Sir Simon Stevens, brings the total to seven confirmed NHS Nightingale Hospitals in a matter of weeks.

East Devon District Council Leader Ben Ingram has welcomed the hospital’s creation, he said: “It is essential we do everything we can to protect people at this time.

“The new Exeter Nightingale Hospital at Westpoint will play a vital role in creating space and improving safety in our Devon hospitals.

“We must do everything we can to control the Covid-19 virus and save lives.”

The five hospitals in Devon and Cornwall will provide the majority of care for critically ill patients with coronavirus, and have plans in place to increase their critical care capacity up to 500 beds across both counties.

The new NHS Nightingale Hospital, which is expected to be ready for the first patients, if needed, by early May, will provide a regional resource of 200 beds for Devon, Cornwall and neighbouring counties to meet the care needs for patients who are seriously unwell due to their coronavirus symptoms.

Elizabeth O’Mahony, Regional Director, NHS England and NHS Improvement – South West, said coronavirus was “the single biggest challenge facing our country for generations.”

She added: “We can learn from the work we are doing in Bristol and the other Nightingale Hospitals across the country. We want the NHS in the South West to be as well prepared as possible.

“The Nightingale Exeter will support our existing hospital network to care for critically ill patients from the south of the region. We are taking steps now to ensure that the hospital is available if required but we hope that it is not needed.

“We ask everyone in the South West to continue to follow the national recommendations to reduce transmission of the virus, please stay at home, observe social distancing, protect your local NHS and each of you will help save lives.”

The set-up of this new facility will be overseen by Philippa Slinger, an experienced NHS Chief Executive, and currently lead Chief Executive for the Devon Sustainability and Transformation Partnership, she said: “I would like to thank local people for their extraordinary support to the NHS by staying at home.

“Where people have needed to go out for essential reasons, they have by and large practised good social distancing. These actions need to continue as they are helping us to manage the pandemic.

“However, our new NHS Nightingale Hospital will ensure we have the right critical care capacity in place to help us manage the expected upsurge in cases.

“Getting our new facility open is a huge task and will be a real collaborative partnership between all NHS providers, commissioners, partner agencies, the armed forces and contractors.”

The new Nightingale Hospital will be hosted by the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust.

Police dished out 169 fines and gave 960 verbal warnings to people flouting coronavirus lockdown rules in Devon and Cornwall over the Easter weekend.

East Devon Reporter eastdevonnews.co.uk 

A quarter of the penalties were issued to offenders who did not live in either county, the force revealed today (Wednesday, April 15).

Officers spoke with more than 5,500 people while carrying out targeted, ‘high-visibility’ patrols which included visits to 4,000 beauty spots and businesses across the region.

Devon and Cornwall Police says its preferred approach is one of ‘engagement, explaining and encouragement’ – with enforcement ‘a last resort’.

Assistant Chief Constable Glen Mayhew said: “We shared the concern of our communities that a small number of people continued to breach the restrictions and were putting lives at risk.

“Our approach was to speak with people and I am really pleased that these figures show a proportionate response.

“With around three per cent of these checks resulting in enforcement, we believe that this shows that our officers used enforcement proportionately and as a last resort.

“We all wanted to enjoy the weather this weekend, but thankfully our beauty spots continue to remain noticeably quieter, which shows that the vast majority of the public are taking government guidance seriously, and are playing their part in helping to reduce the spread of Covid-19, protect the NHS safe and save lives. 

“We have seen a slight increase in traffic on the roads, but our roadside checks are establishing that the majority of these who are on our roads are undertaking essential travel. 

“I understand the appeal for people to go out, but we need to keep to the restrictions.

“The signs are that they are having an impact, so we all need to do our part to reduce the strain on our NHS as this will ultimately save lives.

“Policing with the support of our communities is our priority and we will continue to use discretion and only use enforcement as appropriate.

“I also want to praise the hard work of partners and volunteers who over the bank holiday weekend supported our activities.

“This included patrols on the beaches and moors to explain to people the importance of the restrictions.

“I would also like to recognise the vast number of other key workers who have also worked incredibly hard, ensuring our core services have continued to deliver.

“Naturally, the coronavirus is at the forefront of our mind, but I want to reassure our communities that we continue to undertake everyday policing; we are still answering over 650 999 calls a day, still responding to incidents and still tackling crime and protecting the vulnerable across Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

“My message to the public is that we are here for you.

“Finally, I would like to thank the public for your continued support and understanding during this challenging time. The messages we have received across social media and comments from the public during our interactions show how difficult we all finding it but how well we are all adapting.

Police and Crime Commissioner Alison Hernandez added: “Police, staff and volunteers in our force have very sensibly taken the approach that they will educate and inform the public of their obligations, but we always knew there would be a cohort for whom enforcement was the only option. 

“We also knew that, despite the warnings, and a #ComeBackLater campaign supported by us and our many partners, our part of the country would prove irresistible to many who put their own wants before the needs of some of society’s most vulnerable members and we’d see some attempting to travel to the South West over the Easter weekend.

“The vast majority of the public are making extraordinary sacrifices at the moment in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and I think they want those who put others at risk dealt with using these new powers.

“Our Chief Constable, frontline officers and staff have my full support, and I believe, the support of the vast majority of our elected leaders, parliamentarians and the public.”

A Sidmouth woman is asking for help to supply the area’s doctors and nurses with fresh scrubs to help keep them and their patients safe during the coronavirus outbreak.

Joseph Bulmer  sidmouth.nub.news

Emma Wickham, a concrete tester from Sidmouth, has stitched together a crack of seamstresses and is raising money to create medical scrubs for the area’s healthcare workers, who are struggling to get hold of these essential garments.

In three days Emma has raised more than £1,100, with a target of £1,500, to buy good quality fabrics, waistband tapes, threads and patterns.

Speaking to Nub News Emma said: “I have sewing skills and it seemed a shame not to use them while nurses and doctors are struggling to get hold of medical scrubs.

“We hear that nurses are having real problems with sourcing scrubs, with some hospitals resorting to using paper sets which are impractical and prone to breaking.”

Emma is a regional coordinator of For The Love Of Scrubs, a project set up by London nurse and seamstress Ashleigh Lindsell.

“Ashleigh started making scrubs for herself and put a shout out to her community asking for help,” explains Emma.

“The response was so overwhelming that she and her husband George decided to find people all over the country to act as regional coordinators.”

Emma grabbed the opportunity to help with both hands and already has orders from Honiton Surgery and Exeter and East Devon’s Children’s Palliative Care Team.

The team, so far, consists of 12 seamstresses but the number of volunteers is expanding daily. Three new seamstresses have joined the team in the last 24 hours.

Emma and her volunteers are keen to stress that all the materials are washed thoroughly before work begins and they are working with a specification from RD&E Hospital, ‘to stay true to the regulations’.

A nurse who ordered scrubs from the project sent Emma this message: “You really are a life saver to us!

“We are a community children’s nursing team which covers four special needs schools, community children’s nursing service which is for children with complex health needs providing care within the children’s home and children’s palliative care which is for children with life threatening or life limiting illnesses.

“Day to day we see lots of babies on oxygen, children with feeding tubes and carry out children’s bloods at home as well as just generally providing emotional support to our amazing families and currently our big focus is nursing poorly kids at home to keep them out of hospital.

“Scrubs not only allow us to change between visits protecting the kids we care for but they protect our own families by allowing us to just chuck them in the machine when we get home.”

The donations will be used to buy rolls of poly-cotton scrub material (approximately £160 per roll), rolls of cotton herringbone tape for waistbands, rolls of sewing machine thread and pattern printing.

“It’s really important that we get help with donations and more seamstresses come forward,” said Emma.

“Doctors and nurses are desperate for more scrubs, they really need more than one set to be safe and keep their patients safe.

“We’re buying good quality fabric and have some excellent seamstresses, one of our team is a former textiles teacher from Sidmouth College. We’ve also got a former London tailor on board.”

Walter Einenkel Daily Kos Staff www.dailykos.com

Sir David King, the U.K.’s chief scientific adviser from 2000-2007, told LBC Radio on Wednesday that a quicker response to the growing 2019 novel coronavirus pandemic would have saved lives. While telling the station that he was saddened by situation England found itself in, he was also very clear when he explained that if leadership had acted sooner, untold numbers of people would still be alive.

Stating that “it seems that we were unprepared and we didn’t take action,” King went on to detail how the recent efforts by politicians like Prime Minister Johnson to cut back on management programs has led them into this very predictable predicament. “For me, this is very upsetting because we had set this preparation process in place, as I say, back in 2006.”

Since the beginning of this crisis, King has been critical of the prime minister’s response and policies. At the beginning of April, King publicly slammed Johnson and the Conservative Party, saying cuts to the country’s National Health System (NHS) would only exacerbate the terrible situation that bad leadership has already gotten the Brits into. He also told Sky News at the time: “We know that what we should have done, early on, is take all sorts of precautionary measures to see that the virus did not get to the level it is now in this country, once we had seen what was happening in China.”

King’s criticisms mirror the very same ones leveled against Republican leadership. In Trump and his Republican Party’s case, huge tax giveaways to the rich have helped to justify attempts (and successes) at dismantling our already overstressed social programs and safety infrastructures. Like Trump’s administration, Johnson has lied and dragged his feet when it comes to the important containment tool of testing, having promised “100,000 tests a day by the end of April” and not even coming close.

As King explained, an early response—a proactive response—was available to any country of almost any means. “You go to Greece and the management of the epidemic, starting very, very early on, has been really astoundingly good. Go to Africa, go to Rwanda, you’ll find the same thing.”

Latest analysis of the Covid-19 tracker app shows rate of new symptoms being reported has slowed significantly in the past few days.

covid.joinzoe.com /post/covid-isolation

The latest analysis of data (14 April) from the COVID Symptom Tracker app, used by over 2 million people, shows the rate of new symptoms being reported nationally has slowed down significantly in the past few days.  The latest figures estimate that 1.4 million people in the UK aged 20-69 have symptomatic COVID, a fall from 1.9 million on the 1st April. You can read more about our machine learning model to predict symptomatic COVID-19 here.

These figures suggest that the nation staying home is having a big impact on the spread of the virus in the UK. The drop in new symptoms indicates that although the number of hospital admissions and deaths from COVID are currently rising, they should start to fall in about two weeks provided social distancing continues. This two week lag is caused by the delay between symptoms starting and becoming very severe.  

This data from millions of people lines up with what has been reported by NHS digital based on much smaller numbers. They show a decline in the number of calls to NHS 111 with COVID since the 22nd March1. 

While symptoms have been decreasing nationally, in all areas there are still many people with active symptoms of COVID. Therefore this data supports both the success of lockdown, and the importance of maintaining it. It also shows that individual areas vary. Most of the country’s larger cities like London, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Liverpool continue to have very high levels of symptoms in the community, even this far into lockdown. Other hotspots include South Wales. There are significantly higher levels of symptoms across the Midlands, the North of England and Southern Scotland than in the South West of England. 

Developed by researchers at King’s College London and healthcare science company, ZOE, the COVID Symptom Tracker has been used to log symptoms by over 2 million people across the UK, with over 10 million individual reports so far. Members of the public are using the app to track their daily health whether they are healthy or showing potential COVID symptoms. It is also being used by healthcare and hospital workers nationwide so their increased risk can be recorded.

“It is really encouraging to see that the rate of new symptoms being reported is beginning to fall. Even though hospital admissions and deaths are still on the rise, we hope that these figures offer a much needed light at the end of the tunnel. 

We have been totally blown away by the public’s response to the app. On the first day we saw one million members of the public download the app making it one of the most successful first days for an app ever, and already probably the UK’s largest citizen science project. The altruism of the UK public combined with modern technology is allowing us to rapidly collect huge amounts of invaluable data to help us better understand this deadly virus. We would like to take this opportunity to thank every single person who is already participating, and would urge everyone else to download the app and check in every day, whether you are experiencing any symptoms or feeling fine.” Professor Tim Spector, King’s College London 

The research team at King’s College London and ZOE are working round the clock to  analyse the data to generate new insights about the disease and its progression. For example, they have discovered that loss of smell or taste is more predictive of COVID in the population than the classical symptoms of fever and cough. An interactive map allowing anyone to see the distribution of COVID in their area is available at covid.joinzoe.com as well as frequent science updates.

The researchers have developed a statistical model which analyses millions of COVID Symptom Tracker data points, including thousands of people who have had tests for COVID, in order to predict which combination of symptoms indicate someone is likely to test positive for  COVID. This model is then applied to the UK population aged 20-69 and then mapped to the regions of the country accounting for age and gender differences to provide maps over time. The most predictive individual symptoms, in order of importance were: lack of taste & smell, fatigue, shortness of breath, fever and persistent cough. The model estimates that 3.5% of these app users would be positive if tested. As contributors continue to share symptoms, and we link it to other health records, the model will become more accurate and sophisticated.

The app is available to download from the Apple App Store and Google Play here.

“For our homework today we will compare two coronavirus press conferences on different sides of the Atlantic.”

Quentin Letts, Political Sketch writer  www.thetimes.co.uk 

Exhibit one came from London, England, where the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, took questions via the usual televised link.

The dapper Mr Sunak was his usual shimmering self, wanting to make sure everyone was safe and well.

Exhibit two? The free-for-all at the White House in Washington. Did you see it? Amazing. Messier than a Tyson Fury fight. Donald Trump stood at his lectern and pretty much pelted the journalists with cowpats.

He began by showing a campaign-style video which bigged up a certain D Trump, various folk saying what a hero he was and that the press should do more to report that. Mr Trump stood to one side of the stage and nodded in agreement at these stirring tributes to his own brilliance.

When the reporters suggested that a coronavirus press conference, at a time of mass deaths, was perhaps not the place for such a film, the president dropped open his mouth in astonishment at their wetness.

He reloaded his muck-spreader and gave them another prolonged splattering, saying he had played a blinder and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. He told the media they were liars and generally hated by the public. A woman from CBS started to chew his ankle. He tried to flick her off. She clung on. He closed his eyes in disbelief and told her she was a disgrace and a fake.

He also had his science guy, Anthony Fauci, tiptoe up to the lectern to recant apparent criticisms he had made about Mr President’s handling of the crisis. These had been misinterpreted, adjudged Fauci. The CBS ankle-biter wanted to know if Fauci had been forced to say this. Fauci tried pulling a “puh-lease, do us a favour, lady” face but looked more as if he was about to start blubbing. And so it continued. Mayhem. Washington sketchwriters have all the fun.

It remains my duty to return to Mr Sunak’s presentation: a chirrup of country birdsong, the creak of a stationmaster’s barrow, Adlestrop in the afternoon. All right, not quite that peaceful. Mr Sunak was speaking soon after the Office for Budgetary Responsibility suggested we could be looking at a 35 per cent economic hit. That’s shrinkage even worse than what I did to my jumper when I put it on the wrong washing-machine programme. BBC presenters expressed astonishment. The only thing surprising was their surprise. Mr Sunak hoped the hit would be short-term. A rapid bounce was possible. But he was not sure.

“British farmers are being forced to fly in fruit and vegetable pickers from Romania using specialist charter jets to keep up with demand during the coronavirus lockdown.” – First article.

“However, over 9,000 people have answered a call from an alliance of labour providers to the fresh produce sector urging Brits to apply for paid work on farms, while individual suppliers of salad, berries and organic vegetables have begun their own campaigns…. it is difficult to find those who are suitable, in the right location, and not likely to leave as soon as their jobs return.” – Second article.

Graeme Paton, Transport Correspondent www.thetimes.co.uk 

The first charter flight operating between Bucharest and London Stansted will land tomorrow, bringing about 180 farm workers to the UK from eastern Europe. The plane is the first of up to six to operate in the coming months to keep farms staffed with labourers.

It follows warnings from the Country Land & Business Association that travel restrictions imposed to prevent a spread of coronavirus were leaving agricultural companies short of staff. Many British workers who have been made unemployed during the lockdown have applied for farming jobs but it is not believed to be enough to fill all vacancies.

The chartered Boeing 737 will arrive at Stansted tomorrow before the workers are transported by bus to sites across the southeast and Lincolnshire. The flight has been chartered by an unnamed food produce company. Passengers on board the aircraft will be expected to maintain social distancing and will not be allowed to leave Romania if they display any symptoms of coronavirus.

Brits urged to help pick veg

Nina Pullman  wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk 

British people out of work or facing income losses due to the coronavirus outbreak are being urged to apply for jobs on farms ahead of a huge anticipated shortage of European pickers.

Over 9,000 people have answered a call from an alliance of labour providers to the fresh produce sector urging Brits to apply for paid work on farms, while individual suppliers of salad, berries and organic vegetables have begun their own campaigns.

The UK’s biggest salad grower, G’s Fresh, has launched a national recruitment drive called ‘Feed our Nation’ for 2,500 jobs on its farms in Cambridgeshire, East Anglia and West Sussex, after seasonal workers from Central Europe, many of whom return every year, were unable to travel.

The company is appealing to those who may have lost jobs or income due to coronavirus, hospitality workers where restaurants, pubs and bars have closed, as well as school leavers or university students. Jobs include tractor drivers, field workers and engineers, and pay is around £400 a week plus piece work for some roles.

“Every day we’re expecting the borders to close. We’re already facing challenges bringing people over from Romania and Bulgaria,” said HR director, Beverly Dixon. “Like many businesses, we were looking at putting on planes, but people don’t necessarily want to get on them. And they’re looking at the news and seeing the UK is getting worse.

“Our season doesn’t start until 22 April, when we will start picking radish and lettuce, followed by celery and beetroot. The government are rightly focusing on today and tomorrow – this is an issue that is going to hit us at the end of next month.”

The UK is approaching its summer growing season. 

The UK’s fresh produce industry requires around 70,000 seasonal workers a year to help pick seasonal fruit and veg, many of which begin to come into season at the end of next month.

Currently many growers are busy planting for the new season, as well as picking the last of the winter crops, which have had an season extended due to recent warm temperature.

“We’re not slowing down on planting. If anything, we’re looking at where we can plant more. If people aren’t going to be going on holiday in July and August there could be a stronger demand,” said Dixon.

Since launching its campaign on BBC lunchtime news, Dixon said the company’s inbox had been filled and “the phones have started ringing”.

In Devon, organic veg box company Riverford is preparing for the start of the English growing season when it would usually take on around 50 extra seasonal workers. The company also buys from a network of organic growers across the UK and Europe.

Ed Scott, Riverford’s harvest and polytunnel manager, said: “We were due 14 experienced, returning seasonal workers over the next two to three weeks: we’re getting one, we think.

“But there are thousands of UK-based workers who have just had their lives turned upside-down.”

Since putting out a seasonal harvest worker job advert, Scott said he has had no shortage of applicants, including many British nationals, but said it is difficult to find those who are suitable, in the right location, and not likely to leave as soon as their jobs return.

“We put out a generic ‘seasonal harvest worker’ job advert which went live on the website on Friday and so far we’ve had 54 applicants,” he said.

“Some are patently unsuitable, some are desperate, some are from Brighton/London/Manchester. Our ‘experienced’ workers are going to be thin on the ground.”

Dixon said G’s, which supplies major supermarkets as well as Riverford, is still relying on some experienced seasonal workers returning who will be able to help train new recruits.

“A lot of people are potentially out of work. We hope that those who may not have considered horticulture as a job may now think again. It’s physical work, it gets you outside, and we are classed as ‘key workers’,” she said.

It has been notoriously difficult to persuade British workers to apply for seasonal work on farms, as a physically-demanding job that is outdoors in often unpredictable weather.

But Dixon said the outbreak of Covid-19 means “all bets are off”. “With the level of unemployment that is currently out there, there are real opportunities for people to get outside, keep fit, and stay in work,” she said.