Government to Close Schools Again
The Government has announced targeted school closures for England in an attempt to control the spread of the virus (though it’s unlikely to help much, as Toby explained yesterday). The Telegraph has the details.
One million primary school pupils will not return to classrooms as planned next term as Boris Johnson unveiled sweeping school closures and warned more could follow.
The Prime Minister said that in order to combat the spread of the new coronavirus variant, the majority of secondary school pupils will now stay at home until “at least” January 18th, two weeks after term was supposed to start. Those in exam years 11 and 13 will return on January 11th.
Only the children of key workers and vulnerable children will go back on January 4th, the scheduled start date. It means the staggered start to term which had previously been announced will be moved back by a week.
Primary schools in “high infection areas”, estimated to affect one million pupils, will also close for the first time since the spring for at least two weeks as Mr Johnson said “even tougher action” was needed because of the “sheer pace” of the rising infections.
The Prime Minister said there was no guarantee that the January 18th return date would not slip further, as the latest data on infection rates would be reviewed at that point.
He added: “I want to stress that, depending on the spread of the disease, it may be necessary to take further action in their cases as well.”
The announcement came as three quarters of the population of England were quarantined in Tier 4 as of this morning, with the rest of the country left in the scarcely less restrictive Tier 3, creating a new national lockdown in all but name.
My own area, Warwick District, was one of those included in Tier 4. Which makes perfect sense when you look at the latest ZOE app data for reported symptomatic Covid.
567 out of a population of 143,753. That’s a burning epidemic right there.
Stop Press: In Sarah Vine’s column in yesterday’s Daily Mail she opposed school closures, saying “it’s madness to treat our schools like nail bars or nightclubs“. Yet her husband Michael Gove is reported to have sided with Matt Hancock and opposed Gavin Williamson’s efforts to keep schools open. Trouble in paradise?
Coronavirus Pandemic Returns UK to Mortality Levels Not Seen Since… er… 2008
The UK reported a further 981 Covid deaths yesterday as the Christmas reporting delay caught up with us. Ross Clark popped up in MailOnline to put the figures into context.
Britain has an elderly population compared with many countries and large numbers of people die every day.
In England and Wales in 2019, for example, 530,841 people died – an average of 1,454 every day or “four jumbo jet” loads, to use the alarmist comparison favoured by much of the pro-lockdown commentariat.
While COVID-19 is, of course, a serious disease, many of those who have died from it were close to the end of their lives in any case. If it hadn’t been COVID-19, it might well have been another infectious disease – flu or pneumonia – which dealt the final blow.
Covid has killed some “healthy” people who did not have underlying conditions, but it has done so in relatively small numbers. Until 4pm on December 23rd, 47,750 people had died of COVID-19 in English hospitals, but fewer than 2,000 of these had no pre-existing medical condition.
These figures, from NHS England, exclude people who have died at home or in nursing homes.
Among those who died, 26% were already suffering from diabetes, 17% had dementia, 16% chronic pulmonary disease, 16% chronic kidney disease and 14% heart disease. Moreover, not all “Covid” deaths were really caused by the disease.
The Government’s definition of a Covid death is someone who has died from any cause within 28 days of testing positive for COVID-19.
You could be struck by a bus three weeks after a positive test and still be reported as a Covid death.
Of all deaths, 54% – some 27,000 – were among the over-80s. Only about 3,600 victims were under 60 and just 388 of these had no pre-existing condition.
When looking at overall mortality it’s important to take into account that the population is both growing and ageing.
The Office for National Statistics says that in the week to December 11th there were 12,292 deaths registered in England and Wales – 14% above the five-year average.
Yet the population is growing and ageing – the number of over-70s is increasing by around 2% a year – so, all things being equal, we should expect more people to die. More enlightening is the “Mortality Monitor” published by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, which adjusts the mortality rate to take account of a growing and ageing population.
Its figures show that mortality in England and Wales in the first 50 weeks of this year was 12.3% higher than in the same period of 2019, but only 6.9% higher than the average for the past 10 years.
It is only 3% higher than in the worst of those years – 2010 – and it is slightly lower than it was in 2008.
In other words, we have been through a pandemic which has closed down large parts of the economy and led to us being locked down in our homes for weeks on end – and yet, after all that, it has really just returned us to the mortality rate of 12 years ago.
The new ONS figures out yesterday show that excess mortality continued to decrease in the week ending December 18th, down to 12.5%. This is despite the number of deaths and Covid deaths increasing on the previous week, since the five-year average increased by a greater amount (this time of year often sees a surge in deaths).
Ross’s piece appeared as data leaked to the Health Service Journal and reported in the Mail showed that ICUs in London, the South East and the East of England are now operating above maximum capacity, meaning staff must be redeployed to manage demand. Essex declared a “major incident”.
Just over a week ago on December 20th, NHS figures showed ICUs operating below average, as Lockdown Sceptics reported on Monday, meaning this has been a sharp rise, suggesting London and the South East are now experiencing similar outbreaks to those seen in northern areas a few weeks ago. An NHS spokesperson said:
The NHS has tried and tested plans in place to manage significant pressure either from high COVID-19 infection rates or non-Covid winter demands and this has always included mutual aid practices whereby hospitals work together to manage admissions.
While the NHS is opening more beds in places like London to care for the most unwell patients, it is vital that people continue to follow government guidance and do everything possible to reduce transmission of the virus.
The Telegraph in an editorial asks why the NHS is not better prepared for this anticipated increase in winter demand.
If the NHS is on the cusp of being overrun, the public is entitled to know why it is not better prepared. Imposing another lockdown, or indeed the burdensome Tier 4 measures much of the country is already labouring under, is not a small matter but an economic and social calamity that will compound the damage already done by months of restrictions. There were no shortage of predictions that the virus would return after the summer. Even the arrival of a new variant of COVID-19 was foreseeable.
Nightingale hospitals, intended to provide extra capacity, stand empty or are being dismantled, supposedly because of a shortage of staff. But if the country faces such an emergency that businesses need to be forcibly closed and individuals stripped of their liberties, why have not more efforts been made to call thousands of retired doctors into service or put student nurses on to wards?
Why indeed. Is lockdown now the preferred Government policy for managing the annual winter beds crisis? Let’s hope not.
Stop Press: A doctor who volunteered to come out of retirement to help explained on Twitter that the NHS asked retirees like her to produce 20 “certificates” that they didn’t have as a condition of hiring them. One of them was proof that they’d received the requisite training in “equality and diversity”. You couldn’t make it up.
Oxford Vaccine Approved
The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine was approved by the MHRA yesterday and will be given to the first patients on Monday. BBC News has more.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved for use in the UK, with the first doses due to be given on Monday.
There will be 530,000 doses available from next week, and vaccination centres will now start inviting patients to come and get the jab.
Priority groups for immunisation have already been identified, starting with care home residents, the over-80s, and health and care workers.
The Government’s vaccine strategy has shifted in light of the announcement.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has authorised two full doses of the Oxford vaccine, with the second dose to be given four to 12 weeks after the first.
The immunisation campaign will now shift to giving as many people as possible their first dose of vaccine with a second dose following within that period.
When the Pfizer-BioNTech jab rollout began, the aim was to give the second dose after three weeks.
But based on advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, the aim now is to give as many vulnerable people some protection from COVID-19, irrespective of the jab they are given.
The Oxford vaccine is easier to store and distribute, as it can be kept at normal fridge temperature unlike the Pfizer-BioNTech jab that has to be kept at -70C.
There is also more confidence about supply as it is UK-made, whereas the Pfizer-BioNTech jab has to be shipped in from Belgium.
Pregnant and breastfeeding women can now take either of the two approved coronavirus vaccines “when the potential benefits outweigh the risks”, experts said at an MHRA news conference.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine can also now be administered to people with a wide range of food and medicine allergies, but people allergic to ingredients in the vaccine should not take it.
Dr June Raine, chief executive of the MHRA, told the briefing that “no corners have been cut” in assessing the safety and effectiveness of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab.
The questions about dosage and effectiveness are said to have been resolved, though details are as yet unpublished.
Trials showed two full doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab were 95% effective at preventing infection, while the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine showed 62% effectiveness – although even in cases where people were infected, there were no cases of serious illness needing hospital treatment.
Trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine also showed that when people were given a half dose then a full dose, effectiveness hit 90%.
But there was not enough clear data to approve the half-dose, full-dose idea.
However, unpublished data suggests that leaving a longer gap between the first and second doses increases the overall effectiveness of the jab – in the sub-group given the vaccine this way it was found to be 70% effective after the first dose.
All the vaccines are expected to be equally effective against the new variants of the virus that have emerged.
It’s a strange one this Oxford vaccine. First the trial dosages were botched and greater efficacy was claimed for an experimental dose. Then that claim was scrapped but a similar claim is now being made, in retrospect, for a greater gap between doses. How does this pass the strict safety standards for trials for new vaccines and drugs? Perhaps the mystery will be solved when the full data is published.
Also noteworthy is that the greater efficacy of 70% is claimed for 12 week spacing, yet the approval is for four to 12 week spacing, suggesting the increase in efficacy is not regarded as crucial when set against speed of rollout.
Stop Press: The EU has yet to be convinced about the Oxford vaccine. Pharmaceutical Technology has more.
The European Medicines Authority (EMA) has said that the drug maker AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford’s COVID-19 vaccine may not be approved in January next year.
Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad quoted the EMA deputy executive director Noel Wathion as saying: “They have not even filed an application with us yet. Not even enough to warrant a conditional marketing licence.
“We need additional data about the quality of the vaccine. And, after that, the company has to formally apply.”
Lest We Forget
We’re publishing another brilliant piece today by Sinead Murphy, a philosophy lecturer at Newcastle University. She looks back at the year gone by and concludes that we’ve lost sight of the difference between life and death – we’ve redefined life as non-death, forgetting all the things that made life worth living. Here is the opening section about one of the most haunting images from 2020.
It’s that time of year when we name the best and worst. Competition is stiff, on one side of the equation at least. How many worsts there have been, each hardly conceivable before it was suddenly real.
But there was a worst of all. In October in Milton Keynes. Two brothers moved to the side of their grieving mother, putting their arms around her shoulders as she sat before the box containing their dead father’s remains, only to be reminded by an official from the crematorium that they were not permitted to be within six feet of their mother during the ceremony – as if she had been lowered into the grave as their father was being raised onto the pyre.
It is the simplest of mourning rituals, a consoling arm around the shoulders. A fragment of a ritual, really. And yet it too has been made to retreat before the march of Health and Safety, those twin murderers of the last vestiges of our arts of living and dying
naufrage/sauvetage 