COVID-19

[lpm]

With Matt Hancock turning up at the opening of the Nightingale Hospital not looking 100%.

Does anyone know - where did the UK get the scientific evidence to support its 7 day isolation period for people with symptoms of COVID-19 (and in Hancock's case confirmed to have it)?

I've been following the published research since January and have not seen anything to justify such a short isolation period in confirmed cases.

SARS-CoV-2 virus can initially be detected 1–2 days prior to symptom onset in upper respiratory tract samples; the virus can persist for 7–12 days in moderate cases and up to 2 weeks in severe cases (WHO mission to China Report) [1]. In faeces, viral RNA has been detected in up to 30% of patients from day 5 after onset and up to 4 to 5 weeks in moderate cases. The significance of faecal viral shedding for transmission still has to be clarified [1].
Prolonged viral shedding from nasopharyngeal aspirates – up to at least 24 days after symptom onset – was reported among COVID-19 patients in Singapore [2]. Researchers from Germany also reported prolonged viral shedding with high sputum viral load after recovery in a convalescent patient [3]. They acknowledge, however, that viability of SARS-CoV-2 detected by qRT-PCR in this patient has not been proven by viral culture.
Prolonged virus shedding has been observed among convalescent children after mild infections, in respiratory tract samples (22 days) and faeces (between two weeks and more than one month) [4].
A shift from positive oral swab samples during early infection to positive rectal swab samples during late infection was observed on Chinese patients; the authors raised concerns about the fact that COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospital on the basis of negative oral swabs [5].

From here: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/defaul ... iteria.pdf

The UK is going against the WHO on this, yet again. It's bizarre that someone can be ill in bed for days, then feel a bit better and head off to the supermarket after 7 days after start of symptoms, particularly when some people (like Johnson) are feeling ill for significantly longer than 7 days..

It's not clear if you can be churning out "live" viruses 7 days after the start of symptoms, or whether it's just dead strands of RNA. Probably there's some residual infectiousness after 7 days, but not so long as to require the 14 day WHO rule.

It's part of the UK's policy of keeping things a bit hotter - allowing construction sites, keeping schools partly open, letting people go out and about after 7 days... A steady infection rate remains the plan, a R0=1 policy to get herd immunity instead of a R0<1 lock down.

[shpalman]

New numbers - highest daily rise thus far, of 684, against yesterday's prediction of 738. Doubling rate changed slightly from 3.08 days to 3.09. Total deaths now 3,605. Expectation for tomorrow given the trend is 886 deaths.

14 days before 5pm yesterday was 5pm on 19 March, when Italy had 3,405 deaths. So we're now something like 13.7 days behind them.

Note that mikeh has some concerns about the actual dates of death, because the deaths reported on any given day could have actually occurred days ago, but this data is only available in masked press releases that aren't being published publicly.

You mean this?

The daily reported numbers of deaths are not the number of people who died in the previous 24 hours

the data suggested the UK was about two weeks behind Italy. “[it's going up exponentially]” he said.

Anyway, today in Italy we seem to have slightly fewer new positives than yesterday. The number of tests has also been ramped up a lot over the past few days. In Lombardy we have something like 5% of tests turning out to be positive (and even taking into account two negative tests for everyone declared cured doesn't make much of a dent in that). Anyway, over the past three days the number of tests per day has been constant and the number of positives per day has been coming down.

If that 5% sets a maximum number for the fraction of the population which might have mild/asymptomatic infection that would be 500,000 cases, and if we rescale the 17.5% CFR to a hopefully more reasonable 1% that rescales the known positives from 26,200 up to about 150,000. So yeah I reckon somewhere between 150,000 and 500,000 cases in Lombardy (pop. 10 million) or 1.5% to 5% of the population.

When they swabbed everyone twice in the small town of Vò near Padova (Veneto not Lombardy) they found about 3% of them had it.

[FlammableFlower]

Not sure entirely where to put this... but wow, isn't he presidential? Even in official letters...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st ... e-schumer/

What an absolute bellend.

That's a bit harsh, I'm sure our blossoming fire-hazard is perfectly pleasant IRL.

Thanks for the support... I think...

[Stephanie]

My brother is an official statistic - confirmed COVID-19 this morning. He's pretty much better already though.

[discovolante]

My brother is an official statistic - confirmed COVID-19 this morning. He's pretty much better already though.

Blimey! Any ideas how he got it? Where is he atm?

[Grumble]

My brother is an official statistic - confirmed COVID-19 this morning. He's pretty much better already though.

Glad he’s one of those who’ve recovered. Was he hospitalised?

[Stephanie]

Blimey! Any ideas how he got it? Where is he atm?

Flatmate works in a hospital so possibly that.

Glad he’s one of those who’ve recovered. Was he hospitalised?

Nah, just tested cos of the flatmate - they wanted him at work.

[Woodchopper]

New from the FT.

FT1.jpg (263.5 KiB) Viewed 4237 times

Looks like Britons and Americans are still out and about more than people in France, Italy or Spain. Parks are closed in the latter.

Source: https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status ... 6040779776

[headshot]

I honestly don't see an issue with people visiting parks, as long as social distancing, no hand-to-face touching and hand washing etc is observed.

[shpalman]

IMG_20200403_204316_621.jpg (68.76 KiB) Viewed 4229 times

[Little waster]

What an absolute bellend.

That's a bit harsh, I'm sure our blossoming fire-hazard is perfectly pleasant IRL.

Thanks for the support... I think...

You know me, always willing to praise with faint damnation.

[Woodchopper]

I honestly don't see an issue with people visiting parks, as long as social distancing, no hand-to-face touching and hand washing etc is observed.

The problem is the 'as long as'.

If everyone isn't then the park may have to be closed.

[Martin Y]

I honestly don't see an issue with people visiting parks, as long as social distancing, no hand-to-face touching and hand washing etc is observed.

I'm inclined to agree, and the Parks chart does show a big decline in the UK, though delayed compared to Italy, Spain and France. The Retail chart seem to show as dramatic a drop in the UK as in those other countries, again just delayed by a week or two.

[Bird on a Fire]

I honestly don't see an issue with people visiting parks, as long as social distancing, no hand-to-face touching and hand washing etc is observed.

The problem is the 'as long as'.

If everyone isn't then the park may have to be closed.

My mum's trying to do social distancing properly, as most of the care homes in our town have (rumoured) positive cases, but the one she doesn't manages doesn't and she wants it to stay that way. She says that every time she does have to go out for food or some exercise, most people don't make the slightest bit of effort to get out the way, even though there's plenty of space in the pedestrianised centre.

My sister (in central London) is avoiding her local park because everyone is walking very close together around the few narrow paths instead of spreading out over the grass.

So it doesn't sound like social distancing is being done properly. And that's a lot easier than remembering never to touch your face or any surfaces.

[jaap]

The weather is going to be very nice this weekend here in the Netherlands, so as a precaution they have already announced that most of the parks will be closed (as will any nearby car parks - that is easier to enforce).

[Gfamily]

Should we go out ringing a bell, to keep other buggers away from us?

[Bird on a Fire]

Portugal has already announced an Easter weekend lockdown. Nobody is allowed to leave their municipality of residence (usually a biggish town and a few neighbouring villages), and there will be police and possibly military checkpoints on the roads.

Portugal has now had a total of 246 deaths. 75,000 cases (10,000 confirmed). The number of cases appears to be increasing linearly, rather than exponentially (suspected in yellow, confirmed in blue):

Screenshot_2020-04-03_21-30-50.png (36.61 KiB) Viewed 4134 times

from https://www.dgs.pt/corona-virus

There's a journalist doing daily maths at this page https://www.dinheirovivo.pt/economia/di ... -esperado/ who says that there's basically 800-odd new cases a day.

He also presents this graph of the growth rates in Portugal and Italy. The x-axis is "days of crisis", but I can't find where that's defined. The y axis is growth rate:


Anyway, the restrictions here do seem to have contained the illness largely to Porto, Lisbon and the Algarve, suggesting that a lot of the cases probably originated with people who brought it in from outside, and that the response was quick enough to stop it becoming endemic. I hope.

[Bird on a Fire]

Should we go out ringing a bell, to keep other buggers away from us?

It's very difficult to bugger from 2 metres away, ringing a bell or otherwise.

[Trinucleus]

Should we go out ringing a bell, to keep other buggers away from us?

It's very difficult to bugger from 2 metres away, ringing a bell or otherwise.

Speak for yourself

[lpm]

New from the FT.

FT1.jpg

Looks like Britons and Americans are still out and about more than people in France, Italy or Spain. Parks are closed in the latter.

Source: https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status ... 6040779776

The UK is only, say, 75% locked down. It still has open schools, public transport, construction, any non essential businesses where employees can't work from home.

Assuming 80% compliance with the 75% target would give 60% effective lock down. Non compliance mostly comes from people socialising at work, younger people, virus-deniers and people seeking sex, alcohol and other drugs.

Trying to halve non compliance would only get you to 67.5%. That's a stretch when people see others going out and about in their everyday lives.

To get meaningful improvement you need to take it from a 75% target to 90% lock down target, force 90% compliance, and get 81% effective - ie halve the contact levels. There will always be accidental and deliberate non compliance, so you need to aim above the actual goal.

[sTeamTraen]

With Matt Hancock turning up at the opening of the Nightingale Hospital not looking 100%.

Does anyone know - where did the UK get the scientific evidence to support its 7 day isolation period for people with symptoms of COVID-19 (and in Hancock's case confirmed to have it)?

I've been following the published research since January and have not seen anything to justify such a short isolation period in confirmed cases.

Shirley this will be a per-case thing, and the time until you are symptom-free and/or non-contagious will depend to a very large extent on how far through the illness you are when tested?

For example, suppose the whole Cabinet got tested on the same day (not unreasonable --- they are running the country FFS, the people going "Oh well it's all very well for Boris Johnson to get a test, what about the nurses????!?!??!1??" are somewhat missing the point) and Hancock had been having very mild (or even zero) symptoms for a couple of weeks by that time? Having the test doesn't restart any sort of biological clock and doesn't tell us when you will be clear, even if everybody's progression was the same.

[headshot]

I honestly don't see an issue with people visiting parks, as long as social distancing, no hand-to-face touching and hand washing etc is observed.

The problem is the 'as long as'.

If everyone isn't then the park may have to be closed.

We live near a very popular beauty spot in the Black Country. We’ve been there for walks most days over the last few weeks and it’s been mostly deserted. We rarely meet anyone, let alone have to avoid coming within 2m.

We’ve also walked a few KM from our house. No real need to avoid people. Most people actively avoid us or move across the street when we’re out walking.

In shops, distancing is being observed very effectively.

[Millennie Al]

Amid all the noise in certain quarters about the lockdown measures crippling the economy unnecessarily, there doesn't seem to be any recognition that most of these businesses are in poor health and would have failed within the year anyway.

Presumably these are the same people who say that the measures are excessive because most of the people who would die are in poor health and would have died within the year anyway.

[Bird on a Fire]

I'd expect them to be the exact opposite people. One group would sacrifice the economy to save lives, the other lives to protect the economy.

I enjoyed the joke, dccarm.

[Woodchopper]

Italy closed parks and public gardens and restricted exercise to the vicinity of people’s houses on 20 March when the official death toll had reached 4000.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN2173BM

If the UK is to follow suit then that’ll be announced this weekend.