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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion


All your Covid19 testing kit requirements sorted in one bouncy castle

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Although if the bloody Covid Recovery Group of MPs manages to maintain a fair chunk of its focus on making the test & trace system better then it is yet possible that that bunch of anti-lockdown numbskulls could manage to contribute pressure towards achieving something actually useful.
Bit shocked to find myself agreeing at least partially with a Tory backbencher this morning. I don't think this will become the new normal though.
“Our argument is, if you got [test and trace] working, and you had lower restrictions, and you did actually get the vaccine out by Easter, you would save 2.4% on the unemployment rate. That’s 200,000 people [who] wouldn’t lose their jobs, and there would be no scarring of GDP long-term, rather than a 3% hit.”
 
Does anyone know how the Christmas rules are intended to apply to people who work over the festive celebration ?
E.g. My son, who lives on his own, works as a porter at a local hospital. He'll probably be working on Xmas day itself, or Boxing Day. Do the rules allow him to mix with our household despite the fact that he'll be mixing with loads of people in a Covid hotspot on a daily basis? How many others will be in the same boat? Or does the government think that nobody works over Christmas?
 
Does anyone know how the Christmas rules are intended to apply to people who work over the festive celebration ?
E.g. My son, who lives on his own, works as a porter at a local hospital. He'll probably be working on Xmas day itself, or Boxing Day. Do the rules allow him to mix with our household despite the fact that he'll be mixing with loads of people in a Covid hotspot on a daily basis? How many others will be in the same boat? Or does the government think that nobody works over Christmas?

I've got to ask but in this scenario why do you care about the small print in a hastily cobbled together set of totally unenforceable rules? Because of various other laws I'd say it is extremely unlikely that the government could make the rules different for those who are working over Christmas, it would amount to discrimination.

To be honest though I can't be bothered to check and suggest you don't bother either. You either feel its safe, a risk worth taking or too much of a risk. I really don't think we should rely on someone who can barely dress himself each morning to definitively tell us what is safe and what isn't.

Sorry if this sounds a bit harsh, I've got a grump on today.
 
I've got to ask but in this scenario why do you care about the small print in a hastily cobbled together set of totally unenforceable rules? Because of various other laws I'd say it is extremely unlikely that the government could make the rules different for those who are working over Christmas, it would amount to discrimination.

To be honest though I can't be bothered to check and suggest you don't bother either. You either feel its safe, a risk worth taking or too much of a risk. I really don't think we should rely on someone who can barely dress himself each morning to definitively tell us what is safe and what isn't.

Sorry if this sounds a bit harsh, I've got a grump on today.
Don't worry. Grump away. We weren't going to take much notice of the rules anyway as we think they're probably far too lax. I just thought how indicative it is of this government that they don't seem to have given much consideration to the millions of people who will at some point be working during the 5 day period.
 
They didn't need to do a fancy postcode lookup thing, a three coloured map would have been fine.

Nope, far too much room for error around the border areas, maps are often a bit laggy to load anyway. Pleased I'm in Tier 3 anyway.
 
It seems only Cornwall, Isle of Wight and the Isles of Scilly are in tier 1.

They all have under 75 cases per 100k, whereas areas on 80+ are all in tier 2 or 3.
 
Tier 1: Medium alert
South East
  • Isle of Wight
South West
  • Cornwall
  • Isles of Scilly
Tier 2: High alert
North West
  • Cumbria
  • Liverpool City Region
  • Warrington and Cheshire
Yorkshire
  • York
  • North Yorkshire
West Midlands
  • Worcestershire
  • Herefordshire
  • Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin
East Midlands
  • Rutland
  • Northamptonshire
East of England
  • Suffolk
  • Hertfordshire
  • Cambridgeshire, including Peterborough
  • Norfolk
  • Essex, Thurrock and Southend on Sea
  • Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes
London
  • all 32 boroughs plus the City of London
South East
  • East Sussex
  • West Sussex
  • Brighton and Hove
  • Surrey
  • Reading
  • Wokingham
  • Bracknell Forest
  • Windsor and Maidenhead
  • West Berkshire
  • Hampshire (except the Isle of Wight), Portsmouth and Southampton
  • Buckinghamshire
  • Oxfordshire
South West
  • South Somerset, Somerset West and Taunton, Mendip and Sedgemoor
  • Bath and North East Somerset
  • Dorset
  • Bournemouth
  • Christchurch
  • Poole
  • Gloucestershire
  • Wiltshire and Swindon
  • Devon
Tier 3: Very High alert
North East
  • Tees Valley Combined Authority:
    • Hartlepool
    • Middlesbrough
    • Stockton-on-Tees
    • Redcar and Cleveland
    • Darlington
  • North East Combined Authority:
    • Sunderland
    • South Tyneside
    • Gateshead
    • Newcastle upon Tyne
    • North Tyneside
    • County Durham
    • Northumberland
North West
  • Greater Manchester
  • Lancashire
  • Blackpool
  • Blackburn with Darwen
Yorkshire and The Humber
  • The Humber
  • West Yorkshire
  • South Yorkshire
West Midlands
  • Birmingham and Black Country
  • Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent
  • Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull
East Midlands
  • Derby and Derbyshire
  • Nottingham and Nottinghamshire
  • Leicester and Leicestershire
  • Lincolnshire
South East
  • Slough (remainder of Berkshire is tier 2: High alert)
  • Kent and Medway
South West
  • Bristol
  • South Gloucestershire
  • North Somerset
Published 26 November 2020
 
This weeks ONS infection survey has some extra caveats in it due to a lab issue:

This analysis does not count as positive those swab results from the laboratory at Milton Keynes where only the single ORF1ab gene was detected at visits from 15 to 21 November 2020. The numbers of this very specific type of positive result are generally very few (under 5%), but increased very substantially and abnormally during this short period at the Milton Keynes laboratory only. This is consistent with reported technical issues of PCR primer contamination in samples processed between 19 to 23 November 2020. These results were removed from this analysis. Initial analysis indicates that almost all of these removed positives will have been incorrectly recorded, and inadvertently removing a very small number of true positives will have a negligible impact on the results presented. The laboratory is reviewing and reissuing reports for the specimens included and the updated data will be included in the next report.

 
They didn't need to do a fancy postcode lookup thing, a three coloured map would have been fine.

not if you can’t see...
anyway site is still broken. But I’ve heard Bristol is in T3. Kind of expected that. need to check London London as well.
 
If Tier 3 is already Very High Alert, what are they going to call Tier 4 when, as seems inevitable, they need to introduce a higher level?
 
Venues (and punters) are going to really take the piss with this because the instructions are so vague


Yeah, my feeling is that restaurants and gastro pubs will be able to make it work. The vast majority of places won't so it'll either be stay shut (assuming they can get some government support) or game the system. The latter seems very likely.

The government have made it clear they don't want pubs to be open so they should just close them and compensate them. The substantial meal is a stupid rule and stupid rules invite stupid responses.
 
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