Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[Catfish Blues]

Thousands of people with Covid-19 in the UK are being missed – expert

The NHS is grossly underestimating the incidence of Covid-19 and encouraging infected people back to work while ignoring key symptoms, a leading expert has claimed.

Professor Tim Spector, head of the department of genetic epidemiology and leader of the Covid symptom study app at King’s College London, said 50,000 to 70,000 people in the UK with Covid-19 are not being told to self-isolate.

He blamed Public Health England (PHE) and the wider tracking strategy, saying an insistence that only temperature and cough were the major symptoms was missing thousands of cases.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that 1.5 million people were logging onto the King’s app and tracking a wide range of symptoms and changes.

“It tells us that we’ve got at least 100,000 cases at the moment of people who are infected,” he said.

“And this is from our data, although the NHS would underestimate that because they’re not counting all the symptoms.”

He said the NHS was failing to track all symptoms of coronavirus, including loss of taste and smell.

“We list about 14 symptoms which we know are related to having a positive swab test, and these are not being picked up by the NHS.”

He said 17 other countries including the US had altered their list of symptoms, but not the UK.

“At the moment, people are being told to go back to work if they’re a care worker, and they’ve got something like loss of smell or taste or severe muscle pains or fatigue – things that we know and we’ve shown are related to being swabbed positive,” he said.

“This country is missing the ball in underestimated cases but also putting people at risk, and continuing the epidemic.

“So we really do need to tell Public Health England to get in line with the rest of the world, and make people more aware.

“There’s no point telling people to be alert if they don’t know the symptoms.

“At the moment they’re not really being offered tests, and they’re being told not to self isolate if they don’t have the fever and the cough and it’s probably around half of the people in the population who are in that situation.

“We are probably missing at the moment between 50,000 and 70,000 people out there who are infected.

“We know that their swab tests will be positive.

“Someone has got to urgently ask this question of why we’re the only country in this crisis that isn’t really widening our group of symptoms and get on with it and do something.”

The official guidance has just been changed



Bit late like, because younger people, including those working at supermarkets, care homes and hospitals are more likely than older people to only lose their sense of taste and smell, which basically shows the level of bureaucracy in some areas slows things down.

 

[LouReedwalkonthewildside]

Corbyn and those clowns Momentum have been the worst thing to happen to the Labour Party in decades.

Had Labour gotten rid of them earlier Labour could have had a chance of getting back into power whereas the Tories had literally no competition.

Under Starmer I just feel more upbeat and confident that he can convince those voters to vote for us that Corbyn couldn't convince.

 

[LouReedwalkonthewildside]

I thought that loss of taste and smell plus fatigue were now generally accepted as symptoms of the disease. Is that not the case? Are people who have those symptoms not being told to self isolate if they phone 111?

I think it was more because the NHS were not stating these symptoms on their official guidance mate, they have now just changed it to include these symptoms.

 

[Barnfred 55]

France have just had to close 7 schools, surely this hokey cokey method is more harmful to kids than just having an online tutoring programme.


French schools shut after child tests positive
Seven schools have closed as a precaution in the north-eastern French city of Roubaix after a child tested positive for coronavirus.
Officials say they will tell the families of those who came in contact with the child. Meanwhile, the shuttered schools will conduct lessons remotely.
French schools began to reopen last week as the country slowly eased its lockdown. But many were concerned about the move, with one poll showing 69% of respondents thought authorities could not keep them safe. A number of other schools have since closed because of positive cases.
Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer told French broadcaster RTL on Monday that 70 cases of the virus had been found in the roughly 40,000 schools that have opened since last week. He said all affected schools had been shut, showing how strict the authorities were being on safety.
But he also said that not teaching children could have serious consequences. "Our children must not be collateral victims of health measures," he reportedly said.

This is similar to the Finnish case mentioned earlier.

Given that the schools only opened some time last week, and the disease as we know has an incubation period of around 10 days, it's most likely that the child in question caught the disease prior to returning to school.

But as I said with the Finnish case, they need to monitor this closely and test the other children and adults who may have come into contact with the infected child. If they all remain virus free it strengthens the science on schools being a low transmitter of the disease. Which would be good news if we want schools to return to something like normal.

 

[Blues Harp]

Under Starmer I just feel more upbeat and confident that he can convince those voters to vote for us that Corbyn couldn't convince.

Be interested to see how he copes with the braying pack of bullying tories behind bozo when the HOC returns to full capacity. lol

 

[ramacca]

Says it all really. Don't do as I do, do as I say.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I thought you'd made the decision to stay off your bike?

Does this the issues surrounding mean your principled stand of staying off it...

a) there is a risk of injury (however small) that would require medical attention
b) there is a risk of mechanical that would require you to get help to get home
c) a degree of solidarity towards those whose exercise of choice is not 'permitted'

...is at an end?

Pretty much, yeah. Abstaining from outdoor riding since October isn't a bad effort I think.

 

[ForeverBlue92]

Under Starmer I just feel more upbeat and confident that he can convince those voters to vote for us that Corbyn couldn't convince.

The fact he looks like a cross between a German war film villain and a 80's pornstar will only serve him well with the female voters.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Says it all really. Don't do as I do, do as I say.

Apples and oranges isn't it? Private schools seem to have migrated the majority of their tuition online, so pupils haven't been too badly affected. That's very far from the case with state school pupils.

 

[LouReedwalkonthewildside]

Be interested to see how he copes with the braying pack of bullying tories behind bozo when the HOC returns to full capacity. lol

I know it's still early days like, but Starmer looks like nothing will phase him, he doesn't get angry, and just gets on with it, something Corbyn couldn't do because he used to go on one when the Tory back benchers started, so they just goaded him more.

 

[Barnfred 55]

I think it was more because the NHS were not stating these symptoms on their official guidance mate, they have now just changed it to include these symptoms.

Yeah ok mate. But if it were generally out there that these were symptoms, and you couldn't really have missed this if you watch even a fraction of the news on the virus, and the NHS are not encouraging you to self isolate if you have these symptoms, I don't get the findings in this report. It says the NHS is actually encouraging people with these symptoms to go to work. I find that hard to believe mate.

 

[davek]

We could always cut out the middleman and go straight for the cavalry charge ?

I'm going to hazard a guess: National Endowment for Democracy?

 

[gonetomorrow]

Rees-Mogg is right. I never thought I'd say that.
If they expect the rest of us to resume work and kids to school then MPs should too.

My god, I found myself nodding along in agreement with Michael O'Leary this morning too.

 

[davek]

Pretty much, yeah. Abstaining from outdoor riding since October isn't a bad effort I think.

What persuaded you to get out again after so long?

 

[LouReedwalkonthewildside]

Yeah ok mate. But if it were generally out there that these were symptoms, and you couldn't really have missed this if you watch even a fraction of the news on the virus, and the NHS are not encouraging you to self isolate if you have these symptoms, I don't get the findings in this report. It says the NHS is actually encouraging people with these symptoms to go to work. I find that hard to believe mate.

Totally agree with you there mate. All that report needed to say was people could be going back to work with symptoms because NHS guidelines aren't including X,Y and Z symptoms (they have now just changed that though) Also, as you say, those other symptoms have been widely reported through the media.