Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[Thora]

It’s no one’s job though

It’s Test & Trace’s job.

 

[maomao]

It’s Test & Trace’s job.

Schools do their own test and trace afaik which was the source of earlier confusion about why t&t hadn't followed up certain people (it was because it had been dealt with by schools). It's normally managed by the school office rather than the teachers themselves though. Both me and my daughter have been sent home from schools as close contacts without test and trace ever being involved.

 

[Thora]

Schools do their own test and trace afaik which was the source of earlier confusion about why t&t hadn't followed up certain people (it was because it had been dealt with by schools). It's normally managed by the school office rather than the teachers themselves though. Both me and my daughter have been sent home from schools as close contacts without test and trace ever being involved.

Sure but it’s really not a teachers job is it?

 

[maomao]

Sure but it’s really not a teachers job is it?

It's the schools' job. Legally, which is why t&t don't touch school related stuff. It's not the job of classroom teachers but a lot of the people involved in it would describe themselves as teachers (for instance where I work it's the heads of year that work out close contacts on the basis of seating plans).

 

[Thora]

I understand that the government have offloaded this burden to schools, but I don’t think that’s a good thing and I totally understand why school leadership is pushing back on doing the job of contact tracers over Christmas when the govt has promised families can celebrate together.

 

[two sheds]

Apparently some GPs are not giving covid vaccinations because they haven't got the people available to do it with their current workload. I can imagine that would hold for testing with quite a few teachers too.

 

[Orang Utan]

It’s Test & Trace’s job.

They're failing though, leaving it to schools and local authorities do their own - we're being forced to do the same as teachers. It's fucked up - barely any training, distressing interactions with upset or truculant customers and many of us are not mentally up to it, but keep getting told we need to be flexible and get used to the 'new normal'. Fuck that IMO.

 

[maomao]

I understand that the government have offloaded this burden to schools, but I don’t think that’s a good thing and I totally understand why school leadership is pushing back on doing the job of contact tracers over Christmas when the govt has promised families can celebrate together.

Sorry, I misunderstood your point. I thought you were saying it isn't their job rather than it shouldn't be.

The t&t app is only recommended for over 16s though and lots of schools don't allow mobiles to be turned on and on the students' person all day. In addition to primary school children who are less likely to have a phone at all. So I'm not sure who could actually do test and trace for schoolkids other than the schools. If test and trace did it themselves they'd have to be in constant contact with the teachers anyway.

 

[brogdale]

Is it not a good thing for children who test positive to isolate?, I dont think allowing infections to spread because teachers feel uncomfortable doing the right thing is in any way defensible

tbh I can well appreciate why teachers are thoroughly pissed off with this situation. Given that "allowing infections to spread" has been the govt. policy since the return to school in September, the belated introduction of testing, with virtually no notice to schools is bad enough. But timed to ensure isolation at precisely the time when families have been promised a relaxation of restrictions and then telling teachers they've got to pass on the bad news. How shit is all that?

 

[Thora]

Sorry, I misunderstood your point. I thought you were saying it isn't their job rather than it shouldn't be.

The t&t app is only recommended for over 16s though and lots of schools don't allow mobiles to be turned on and on the students' person all day. In addition to primary school children who are less likely to have a phone at all. So I'm not sure who could actually do test and trace for schoolkids other than the schools. If test and trace did it themselves they'd have to be in constant contact with the teachers anyway.

Yes I think actual contact tracers should do it.

 

[Thora]

And as was the plan in August/September, whole classes should be sent home.
It’s an airborne virus so this bullshit about teachers being immune because they’re supposed to stand 2m away and all children face the front so only the kids next to them need to isolate is clearly nonsense.

 

[maomao]

Yes I think actual contact tracers should do it.

How? I don't understand what mechanism they would use. Do you mean the teachers hand over the list of names and t&t call them? Because the teachers are the ones who know whose been in contact with who (and have records of registers and seating plans). And they're also the ones who enforce the non-attendance at school part of the isolation.

 

[maomao]

And as was the plan in August/September, whole classes should be sent home.
It’s an airborne virus so this bullshit about teachers being immune because they’re supposed to stand 2m away and all children face the front so only the kids next to them need to isolate is clearly nonsense.

Well they'd be applying a different standard to schools than they do to everything else then.

 

[Thora]

How? I don't understand what mechanism they would use. Do you mean the teachers hand over the list of names and t&t call them? Because the teachers are the ones who know whose been in contact with who (and have records of registers and seating plans). And they're also the ones who enforce the non-attendance at school part of the isolation.

Close the child’s bubble at school.
Contact tracer speaks to child/parent about who they have had contact with outside school.

 

[Thora]

Well they'd be applying a different standard to schools than they do to everything else then.

The standard at school is different to elsewhere - there’s no social distancing, schools aren’t “covid secure” in the way any other workplace is supposed to be, children aren’t wearing masks indoors.

 

[maomao]

The standard at school is different to elsewhere - there’s no social distancing, schools aren’t “covid secure” in the way any other workplace is supposed to be, children aren’t wearing masks indoors.

This very much depends on the school. I've heard varying reports.

 

[Thora]

This very much depends on the school. I've heard varying reports.

I don’t believe any school can achieve social distancing with all children in, and I doubt any enforce mask wearing all the time indoors.

 

[maomao]

I don’t believe any school can achieve social distancing with all children in, and I doubt any enforce mask wearing all the time indoors.

Yes, genuine social distancing is not possible. Not without more rooms and more teachers.

 

[elbows]

It's the schools' job. Legally, which is why t&t don't touch school related stuff. It's not the job of classroom teachers but a lot of the people involved in it would describe themselves as teachers (for instance where I work it's the heads of year that work out close contacts on the basis of seating plans).

Thats not how I'd describe test & trace matters in relation to schools.

There is more than one part of test and trace. There has always been the PHE & local health protection teams stuff. Institutions, very much including schools, would report to and work with PHE/local health teams when there were cases with links to the institutions, so that judgements could be made about whether there was a notable cluster linked to the institution, and so that tailored advice could be give and responses developed for that particular situation.

However there were issues, including the limited resporces of PHE and local health teams, and pressure from government to do things in such a way that the governments broader pandemic schools agenda wasnt thwarted by cautious and reasonable responses to school outbreaks. So at some point I recall there was a story about how schools were given a different sort of hotline to call for advice when dealing with cases/outbreaks linked to the school. I've not heard about that since, and my info in general is incomplete. And I'm sure plenty of schools feel like they didnt get the advice, support and correct decisions they deserved when dealing with these other entities. I just wanted to paint a picture of test & trace that doesnt involve too much focus on the centralised test & trace regime instead of the local institutional outbreak response teams that are more appropriate to think about when discussing schools.

 

[Wilf]

Schools going online for the final week is just about the only logical response to the government instituting Kill Your Nan Week over Christmas. The kids need to have gone through something like a full isolation cycle before getting into the multi-household virus transfer programme from the 23rd. But no, the fucking government threaten legal action against the schools.

 

[elbows]

The Christmas relaxation timing in relation to epidemic stage, levels of infection and trajectory is looking increasingly hideous.

Plus shitting of bricks is going on because much of the data implies that the 'lockdown 2' measures were not enough to keep a lid on things, let alone the tier restrictions that came after.

I suppose the large holes in lockdown 2 allowed infections to continue in a range of settings, and the limited success looked more impressive than it really was because epidemic timing in some badly hit places meant things were on their way to steep falls in certain places at the time anyway.

There is regional variation in timing and scale but possibly not by as much as news and data detail of recent weeks might make people think. So although I will place special emphasis on London, the South East and the East of England at the moment, the other regions data bothers me too.

Cold feet are developing in Wales about the agreed UK Christmas relaxation. At this rate we will hear the same sentiments in regards England.

 

[Thora]

Thats not how I'd describe test & trace matters in relation to schools.

There is more than one part of test and trace. There has always been the PHE & local health protection teams stuff. Institutions, very much including schools, would report to and work with PHE/local health teams when there were cases with links to the institutions, so that judgements could be made about whether there was a notable cluster linked to the institution, and so that tailored advice could be give and responses developed for that particular situation.

However there were issues, including the limited resporces of PHE and local health teams, and pressure from government to do things in such a way that the governments broader pandemic schools agenda wasnt thwarted by cautious and reasonable responses to school outbreaks. So at some point I recall there was a story about how schools were given a different sort of hotline to call for advice when dealing with cases/outbreaks linked to the school. I've not heard about that since, and my info in general is incomplete. And I'm sure plenty of schools feel like they didnt get the advice, support and correct decisions they deserved when dealing with these other entities. I just wanted to paint a picture of test & trace that doesnt involve too much focus on the centralised test & trace regime instead of the local institutional outbreak response teams that are more appropriate to think about when discussing schools.

When my child had covid at the beginning of September, schools & settings called local PHE for advice. For my childminding setting they took the details of all children and also took details of any other settings they attended. They took details of my children's schools and advised that my daughter's class closed and also another class as they shared toilets.
Then contact tracers also contacted me and traced all my child's movements outside of school - friends she played with, extra curricular activities she'd been to.

By the 3rd week in September it was changed to calling a DfE hotline and they would tell schools/settings how to do contact tracing - iirc it then wasn't considered an "outbreak" until there were several cases in one class/bubble and schools had to look at seating plans and only send home children sitting next to positive cases.

 

[elbows]

Cold feet are developing in Wales about the agreed UK Christmas relaxation. At this rate we will hear the same sentiments in regards England.

Wales cold feet example here:

Covid: Christmas five-day relaxation period 'a mistake'

The warning from a public health expert comes as the UK reports a further 519 deaths.

www.bbc.co.uk

Also includes a glimpse of what attempts to resist changing the Christmas plan in response to terrible data and hospital situation will look like - framed as an issue of trust and public compliance.

 

[planetgeli]

Schools going online for the final week is just about the only logical response to the government instituting Kill Your Nan Week over Christmas. The kids need to have gone through something like a full isolation cycle before getting into the multi-household virus transfer programme from the 23rd. But no, the fucking government threaten legal action against the schools.

A 1500 pupil comp near me closed its doors on Wednesday, ahead of the shutdown called the following day and in direct defiance of our local (county) Director of Education who told the Headmistress she couldn't do it.

Brave and sensible woman. More Heads need to have her courage.

 

[Cloo]

Is there any info available on how many people are being vaccinated per day? It still all feels rather ad hoc and like there's not much of plan other than sort of grabbing the nearest over- 80-year-old and injecting them? It would be good to know if there was a plan of how, where and how many people they expected to get to per day/week etc.

OTOH I was pleased to see shared on next door (and I shared on other local forums) a survey from trusts in North London about where people would be happy to receive vaccinations, both in terms of distance to travel, what sort of venue (eg library, GP, leisure centre, hospital, place of worship etc). Parents and I have responded to it.

 

[weltweit]

What is this business that a scotch egg can be considered a substantial meal for the purposes of selling alcohol?

[Just overheard a snippet on the news]

 

[oryx]

Is there any info available on how many people are being vaccinated per day? It still all feels rather ad hoc and like there's not much of plan other than sort of grabbing the nearest over- 80-year-old and injecting them? It would be good to know if there was a plan of how, where and how many people they expected to get to per day/week etc.

I was thinking the same thing, also news on the roll-out has gone very quiet.

 

[Cid]

What is this business that a scotch egg can be considered a substantial meal for the purposes of selling alcohol?

[Just overheard a snippet on the news]

A fucking stupid misinterpretation of legislation by the people who drafted it. And a fucking stupid distraction.

 

[elbows]

NHS Providers arent impressed by the current situation and how hard it may be for them to cope over the next few months.

Covid: Public must think carefully about Christmas risk, NHS bosses warn

NHS bosses say they are worried about January, after the US saw a spike in cases after Thanksgiving.

www.bbc.co.uk

In its letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, NHS Providers said while there were "good signs of progress" in some parts of the country, there was a "worrying increase in infection rates across a wide range of areas", including Essex, Kent, London and parts of Lincolnshire.

It called for areas to be moved into tier three - the highest level of restrictions - "as soon as this is needed, without any delay".

NHS Providers added that "the evidence of the second wave suggests that unless infection rates fall to a very low level, as they did in London after the first wave, the virus will spread again quickly as soon as restrictions on social contact are relaxed".

"Trust leaders are worried that if infection rates remain as high as they are at the moment, relaxing the restrictions will trigger a third wave," it said.

Citing evidence of a rise in infection rates following Thanksgiving celebrations in the US, NHS Providers warned "a relaxation of restrictions on social contact, combined with the natural desire to come together for a traditional festival, will inevitably increase the spread of the virus".

"We are concerned that the current public debate on these rules is ignoring the significant extra risk involved in this temporary relaxation," it said.

"The prevailing public perception is: 'Thank goodness we can celebrate Christmas.' We believe it is vital for the public to understand that any extra social contact, particularly with those who are vulnerable to the effects of the virus, is risky and that they need to think very carefully before initiating such contact over the Christmas period."

 

[Cloo]

I was thinking the same thing, also news on the roll-out has gone very quiet.

It may be in part because it sounds like a lot may be down to local trusts and maybe there will be more local rather than national roll-out schemes. Which does make some kind of sense as obviously the needs of Dorset will be very different to those of Greater Manchester and so on, and it does sound as though more local approaches have worked better than national. One reason I was heartened to see our local trusts surveying people as obviously it'll be important to find out how far people will be willing to travel and to what venues so evidently they're trying to deliver in the right places at the right density.

But I know there are issues with the Pfizer being available in large batches and how that's got outside of hospitals.