Feeling pretty good about the current Covid results

[andrewducker]

Constantly downward trend since the 7th. Halving about every two weeks.

This is still a lot higher than I'd like, and going down slower than I'd like. But I am very grateful that things are working, and that we might be able to relax things at some point. Particularly once Scotland gets its vaccinations going faster.



(If anyone can tell me why Scotland is going slower I'd appreciate an explanation.)

In any case, I am hoping that nurseries will reopen before I go back to work (start of March), and that vaccinations will be going well enough that they'll be helping contain the spread by the end of April.

Comments

[drplokta]

I believe Nicola Sturgeon has said that Scotland is going slower because they’ve been concentrating more on the highest priority group, care home residents, who are harder to get to because they can’t generally come to large vaccination centres.

[andrewducker]

I don't really understand why they can't send any vaccines not being used for this to GP surgeries for use on other important priorities.

[nojay]

The primary vaccine being used and distributed at the moment is the Pfizer/Biontech mRNA vaccine that requires extreme cold for storage and transport. Getting a super-cold vaccine to a care home, prepping it for injection and then treating residents and staff uses up the time window before any surplus vaccine becomes ineffective.

Care homes in the big cities are easy-ish to deal with, the smaller homes out in rural areas and the Highlands and Islands are more of a logistical problem. The government got hammered for the number of COVID-19-related deaths in care homes last year and they're determined to get 100% of those vulnerable cases vaccinated ASAP.

[rhythmaning]

I have heard but have no evidence that the infection rate in Scotland is a lot lower than in England. Looking at the Scottish govt site, I can see the top graph is Scottish data - showing 994 cases(in case anyone else was wondering!)

Source: https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/

[andrewducker]

Oh yeah, we're one of the lowest regions.

https://www.travellingtabby.com/uk-coronavirus-tracker/

(Map near the top)

[rhythmaning]

I forgot about that site - it's so useful! Thanks for sharing!