Kaz, I don't know where Sky got the figure of deaths you quoted earlier from yesterday. But there were 32 all settings deaths yesterday. It was originally 30 and was put up as that but they added 2 more several hours later as Northern Ireland added two deaths from a hospital outbreak that they had to verify were Covid first. They delayed publishing their data to do so as I reported on here early afternoon.
That is - as I said last night - the highest for over a month. So is indeed a warning sign as there has been an increase in deaths to around such levels in Spain and France a week or two after their cases suddenly spiked upwards as ours now have in the past few days.
But it will as always depend on how we keep the vulnerable protected and how sensible the young who feel invulnerable are prepared to be. Mixing of these together is what will increase the death numbers.
I am hopeful we will never get near the numbers we saw before in terms of deaths in what is an inevitable winter increase unless and until we have a vaccine (though the news on the Oxford one is not helpful today - on hold whilst they investigate a patient who has gotten ill). There are multiple reasons to think we will handle the increase in cases better.
Though unless and until we get the test, test, test basis far better than we ever have in the UK over the past 6 months it will never be enough.
This is the one question our PM must be made to answer in the press conference at 4pm today. Why after six months in a country with one of the best pharma industries in the world are we so utterly useless at getting the testing right? I know someone who works in one of the labs and she is upset at the way this has been allowed to deteriorate and things not mobilised properly.
