There are concerns tonight about the predicted rise in short car journeys being made to get school children to school safely. The Dept. of Transport assess the current car usage at 70% of normal levels after the schools returned last month but has continued to rise since then. This in turn will cause both traffic congestion and toxic air pollution around school gates.
Ramadan is presenting a real challenge in Pakistan as they try to tackle rising numbers of cases and deaths. There is a clear 3rd wave there now.
Here in the UK good progress continues. 1,041,368 covid tests were done in the last 24 hours. 2,524 were positive. This is a 10% reduction in the 7 day rolling average. it means the positive rate is only 26.1 cases per 100k of the population. There have been just 33 deaths recorded in the last 24 hours a reduction of 23.7% in the last 7 day average. The death rate is only 0.2 per 100k of the population. Admissions to hospital have dropped below 200 per 24 hrs. There were 192 admissions on 14th April The number in a hospital bed has also fallen to below 2,000. There were 1,973 on the 18th April and only 318 required a ventilator.
With over 33 million first jabs and over 10 million 2nd jabs we are on course to have all adults immunised by the end of July
Boris Johnson warns that almost all the leading scientists suspect we will have a 3rd wave of cases later this year but at the moment there is no need to deviate from or pause our pathway out of lockdown. The Prime Minister announced a new antiviral task force to work on the use of antiviral dugs immediately after a positive test. He is looking for a pill to take immediately after diagnosis which will prevent any serious symptoms and keep you out if hospital. Or in another scenario if a close friend or family member catches it with a positive test you could take a pill to prevent you actually getting it.
Rather alarming new that airports are detecting false covid certification about 100 times a day. The usual give away is that there is a mis spelling in the fake document. It is clear that most of the dialogue at points of entry are based on mutual trust. The addresses given are not checked they are assumed to be correct as are the names of people they say they are staying with. There is no way of checking which other countries including those labelled red, have been visited in the last few days. If the only way we spot fakes is a spelling mistake how many are fake and not being discovered? We must improve this system it is clearly not working. There are about 900 arrivals from India every day to the UK are they all really essential?
There is still a long way to go, we are on course, but we must be vigilant and stay alert. You know what we have to do to keep variants from our Island.
Please stay safe.
Kenneth Hines' WordOfWisdom 