Yep. Oddly, but somewhat predictably, the bounce back has probably overwhelmed a lot of the businesses in the hospitality sector. I suppose it's a welcome problem to have and far more palatable than still having to remain closed.
No doubt things will calm down a little in the coming weeks, but while there's very little in the way of positive consequences of the pandemic, the way hospitality has had to adapt and improvise could be a great thing going forward. I can see Al Fresco dining and drinking being much more of a thing despite our much vaunted weather even when it's deemed to be safe to eat and drink indoors. There's now loads of provision for outdoor dining and drinking in suburban pubs and in town, particularly in the Northern Quarter. Also, this policy that many bars adopted last summer when we came out of lockdown of just scanning your phone onto a QR code on your table (which then pulls up a menu), ordering your drinks, and having them brought over knocks the shit out of having to queue at a crowded bar and seeing other fuckers get served before you when you were there first.
You work with the info you have at the time, Best guess as it were. As the WHO have said over and over. if you wait till you know everything you have already lost as by then its taken hold and is impossible to stop.
better to react and be wrong than not and be dead.
Waste ground, useable pavements and old storage containers are more important than location right now.What's that old saying? Necessity is the mother of invention? It's been really interesting to see how pubs and bars have and are adapting to this and the long term benefits they'll get. There are several pubs near me who previously had bits of waste ground where they stored their barrels and allowed people to stand and have a fag that now have really nice beer gardens with tables and grass down!
Great stuff.ONS estimates of infections in UK show fall from 185,000 estimated to 130,000 in most recent data (wk to 10 April)
1 in 500 UK testing positive
England down from 1 in 340 to 1 in 480
Wales down from 1 in 800 to 1 in 920
N. Ireland down from 1 in 300 to 1 in 710
Scotland down from 1 in 410 to 1 in 500.
Figures just cited on BBC.
Great stuff.
That's an estimated 1 in 500 WITH the virus, isn't it, rather than 1 in 500 testing positive on a particular day etc?
‘Could’ be a lot more problematic
‘May’ be even less controlled
Few on here could take his advice.
Few on here could take his advice.
ONS take a random sample.
One in 500 of those tested positive.
You can't directly link it to the daily positive count, but expect the same trend.
I like itWales update:
0 deaths - was 1 last week
48 cases - was 114 last week
0.4% positivity - was 0.8 % last week
Remarkable numbers.
Cannot recall a lower case number on normal weekday from over 10,000 tests too - and 4 of the last 5 Welsh numbers have been below 100 and the one that wasn't was just 105.
Just checked and it was August Bank Holiday last time it was lower than 48.
Yes, it's just a potential concern by a professor in Medicine who i'm pretty certain is more qualified than someone who dismisses any concerns as 'scaremongering shite'
Concerns rise about spread of coronavirus variant in London Several people infected by strain first identified in South Africa had received at least one vaccine shot.
Surge testing has been expanded to four London boroughs as concern grows that the test and trace programme cannot contain a coronavirus variant that has shown increasing signs of vaccine resistance.
A total of 56 cases of the variant first identified in South Africa were found in the week to April 14, according to data released on Thursday, taking the total confirmed cases since it was first detected in December to 600. The largest “surge testing” operation since the start of the pandemic was launched in the boroughs of Wandsworth and Lambeth on Tuesday, then extended to postcodes in Southwark and Barnet, as public health officials urgently try to halt the spread of the strain, named 501Y.V2. “Surge testing works until the day that it doesn’t,” said Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, adding that the variant could “completely devastate us” if health officials were unable to prevent it from spreading nationwide — like B.1.1.7 did at the end of last year.
While the first case of 501Y.V2 found in Southwark was believed to be linked to the initial cluster in Lambeth and Wandsworth, genomic sequencing indicated that the Barnet case was unconnected.The new cases have caused concern in the government as several of those infected had received at least one shot of either the AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccine, suggesting the variant may have been able to resist vaccine protection, according to one test and trace official. Scientists have questioned whether the rapid rollout of tests in densely populated neighbourhoods will be sufficient to stem the spread of a highly transmissible strain, particularly when London is emerging from lockdown.
“I am extremely concerned that . . . the horse may have already bolted,” said Dr Zubaida Haque, a member of Independent Sage, convened as an alternative to the government’s top scientific advisory group. The relaxation of lockdown rules in England this week and children’s return to school after the Easter break were “the perfect storm” for variants to spread, Haque added.
Scientists also fear that the 501Y.V2 variant may have a competitive advantage over the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in Kent, as it appears it may be able to infect some vaccinated people due to mutations around its spike protein, which it uses to enter human cells."
Financial Times.
why were we still letting people in...