Coronavirus COVID-19 Diary
Progress of a Pandemic
Part 3 – 2022 – UNCERTAINTY

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Where it began, it seems a long time ago ....
This is the view from the market town of Ledbury, the heart of a rural community in Herefordshire, England. The county is set between the Malvern Hills and the border with Wales. Recording facts about the pandemic as it happens from direct evidence or reliable information sources worldwide.

The story continues ....

• Saturday 1st January The i newspaper reports that thousands of people left messages on the Chinese Weibo social media account of Li Wenliang, the opthalmologist who first alerted the authorities to the novel coronavirus in Wuhan. It is the second anniversary of his warning (see 2020 diary) and the messages expressed thanks and sadness that he was among the first to die of COVID-19.
  The UK Government website reported today that a total of 546,000 people in England have been hosptalised in England since the start of the pandemic. The number is 43,000 in Scotland, 37,000 in Wales and 15,000 in Northern Ireland. At present there are 14,500 people in hospital including 850 in mechanical ventilation beds but these figures are expected to continue to rise.
• 2nd January Last August the UK Government promised to supply around 300,000 carbon dioxide monitors to all state-funded education settings made possible by £25 million of government funding. The aim was to detect poorly ventilated rooms (CO₂ levels over 1500ppm) where improvements needed to be made. They also supplied 1000 air purifier units as a trial. Today the Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi announces that the Department of Education will supply a further 7,000 units. They will be targeted at modern classrooms without opening windows where recirculating air conditioning units are in use.
• 3rd January The latest world figures from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Right click to view the dashboard full-size or
  
• 5th January The Evening Standard reports on 14th January that NHS staff absences peaked today at 49,941. The total includes staff who were ill with coronavirus or who were having to self-isolate.
• 6th January The gov.uk ‘Coronavirus in the UK’ webpage says that from 6 January in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and 11 January in England, people with positive lateral flow results for COVID-19 need to report their result but don’t need to take a confirmatory PCR test unless they develop COVID-19 symptoms. This is a temporary measure while COVID-19 rates remain high across the UK as the vast majority of people with positive lateral flow test results can be confident that they have COVID-19. A similar approach was taken in January 2021, when infection prevalence was high, meaning it was highly likely that a positive lateral flow test COVID-19 result was a true positive. Confirmatory PCRs were temporarily paused and reintroduced in March 2021 after infection rates fell.
• 8th January The evening TV news reports that the figure for COVID-19 deaths now exceeds 150,000.
  Vaccination progress is shown on these UK Government website charts. The number of people of all ages who have received a COVID-19 vaccination is shown as a percentage of the population aged 12 and over using the 2020 mid-year population estimate. Right click to view full-size or
  
• Sunday 9th January On BBC Broadcasting House this morning Paddy O’Connell spoke to consultant Dr. Steve James who gives his personal reasons for refusing the COVID-19 vaccination.
• 11th January A New Yorker cartoon from early on in the pandemic.
  Progress of the pandemic in our area of Herefordshire and edge of Worcestershire from August 11 last year to today. Right click to view the video full-size or
  
• 12th January Dr. Jonathan Van-Tam who has been a prominent figure at Government briefings from Downing Street tells health officials this evening that he will leave his government post at the end of March to return to academia. He was on secondment from Nottingham University to the Department of Health for a four and a half year period and appointed deputy chief medical officer for England as well as serving on the SAGE Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies  committee.
• 13th January The UK Times newspaper reports that Prime Minister Boris Johnson defied calls last night for his resignation over lockdown parties in Downing Street as the Tories fell to their lowest poll rating against Labour in almost a decade. Speaking in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister apologised to the public for the  rage they feel over the allegations as he admitted attending an event in the No 10 garden in May 2020. He said he believed it was a work event and that he had not seen an invitation from his principal private secretary for 100 staff to bring their own alcohol to  socially distanced drinks. He also told the Commons he had gone to the No10 party gathering to  thank staff. The UK newspapers have critical headlines today.
  UK newspapers online report that the Health Secretary Sajid Javid tells the Commons today that the Covid self-isolation period in England for those who test positive will be cut to five days from next Monday. He said that the UKHSA UK Health Security Agency  found  around two thirds of positive cases are no longer infectious by the end of day five. People will only be allowed to leave isolation if they record two negative lateral flow tests on days five and six, before being allowed to leave on the sixth. After reviewing all of the evidence, we’ve made the decision to reduce the minimum self-isolation period to five full days in England, Mr Javid said.  From Monday, people can test twice before they go, leaving isolation at the start of day six.
• 14th January Euronews reports that in India hundreds of thousands of Indian pilgrims are attending a massive religious festival as cases of Covid-19 spread across the country. Authorities said they expected up to three million people to take a ritual bath in the holy river Ganges on Friday, the highlight of the annual Gangasagar Mela. A similarly colossal religious festival, the Kumbh Mela, which the Hindu nationalist government refused to ban last April, has been blamed in part for a devastating spike in cases that have killed 200,000 people, according to official counts, though some experts fear the real toll is several times higher.
• 15th January This Herefordshire Council advertisement appeared in the local newspapers last November just before Omicron was recognised.
  
• 16th January On BBC Broadcasting House this morning Paddy O’Connell does a follow-up on coronavirus antibodies by having himself tested.
  
• 17th January Euronews reports that from today, older people in Greece that are not vaccinated face monthly fines. Those over the age of 60 and without the jab will have to pay a €50 penalty in January, rising to €100 in February. The decision comes as the country’s public health system struggles to cope with an increase in cases and the government starts to run out of patience with those who are still unvaccinated against COVID-19. In France a new “vaccine pass” bill means people 16 and over who aren’t fully vaccinated will be excluded from restaurants, movie theatres, sports arenas, and other venues, trains and domestic flights. Starting from February, Austria will become the first European country to make coronavirus vaccination compulsory for all adults. Those who do not comply will face a hefty fine of up to €3,600.
• 18th January On 21st December the Full Fact website had an article by Abbas Panjwani entitled “How many people in England are unvaccinated?” It explained clearly the problems in answering this question.
  The Office for National Statistics (ONS) latest estimate for 2020 puts the population at 55.6 million based on updating the 2011 census figures. The ONS estimate for the population aged 12 and over is 48,375,273.
  The UKHSA UK Health Security Agency  uses data extracted from the National Immunisation Management Service (NIMS) which counts 62,724,319 people in England registered with the NHS. However this s expected to overestimate the total population of England (and therefore the total number of unvaccinated people), as it includes people who are still registered with the NHS but moved abroad for example, and may double count people registered with more than one GP. The NIMS figure for the population aged 12 or over is 54,328,630.
  Today the total number of first vaccinations in England is reported as 43,819,571 so that means somewhere betweeen 4,555,702 and 10,509,059 people are unvaccinated. The ONS figure is 9.4%, but the NIMS figure is 19.3% of the 12 and over population of England.
  
• 19th January The UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid gives a television briefing this afternoon where he summarise the developments since he took over the post and confirms the latest relaxations of the rules. (9 mins)
  This slide, presented at the briefing, shows the link between vaccination status and hospital admissions.
  
• 21st January London Mayor Sadiq Khan says that the Major Incident in the capital, declared on 18 December, is stood down today as daily case numbers are falling.
• 23rd January These UK Government figures (PDF file) show how the Omicron wave of COVID infections was reflected in hospitalisations and the various days when peaks occurred. Reports from various hospitals were that most patients were unvaccinated.
• 26th January The Open Access News website reports on the latest data released by the REACT Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission  programme. This programme was commissioned from the Imperial College London, School of Public Health by the UK Department of Health, to track how COVID-19 is spreading in the country. The Omicron variant has now made an “almost complete” replacement of Delta in the UK, according to the latest analysis. Now, scientists are tracking “unprecedented” levels of COVID cases across the country. Currently, one in 23 people have had the virus. This is a much higher level of infection than January, 2021, despite the presence of majority double-vaccination across the country. Professor Paul Elliott, director of the REACT programme,   There is good news in our data in that infections had been rapidly dropping during January, but they are still extremely high and may have recently stalled at a very high prevalence. When it comes to age groups, school-aged children have the highest number of infections. At the moment, one in 13 children are testing positive. The lowest level of infection is currently in those aged above 75+ at one in 41 cases of COVID. However this is still a 12-fold increase in contrast to December, 2021.
• 27th January The UK Government COVID dashboard reports today that from 31st January UKHSA will change its case reporting. Up to now cases have been individual people who had been infected but reinfections were not counted as a new case. From here on where a person has a a reinfection 90 days or more after a previous infection this wil be logged as a completely new case. Many cases now are reinfections, but this means the link with population is broken and the number of cases recorded will not relate to the number of people affected. The total number of infections may not be a useful figure. Right click to view the chart full-size or
  
  In Scotland, individuals are only counted as cases once, on the date of their first positive test.
  Also, from today, face masks are no longer required to be worn in secondary school classrooms or communal areas. Face coverings are also not legally necessary anywhere else, but remain a requirement in healthcare settings such as GP surgeries, hospitals or care homes. The government “recommends” that people wear face coverings in enclosed or private spaces, but this will be a personal judgement. However London Mayor Sadiq Khan confirmed masks will remain mandatory on all TfL Transport for London  services including the Tube [London Underground Trains].
  A number of major retailers including Tesco, Sainsburys, Lidl, Waitrose, Morrisons and John Lewis have also asked staff and customers to keep wearing a face covering as recommended by the retail workers trade union USDAW Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers . General secretary Paddy Lillis said  We hope all retailers will continue to put staff and customer safety first. Wearing a face covering is an important measure to help protect workers who have no option but to interact with the public. Masks are still a legal requirement in many situations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
• 28th January This week’s edition of the BBC More or Less radio programme reports a fact that has been widely quoted on social media, including by David Davis MP, that the number of deaths purely down to COVID-19 is 17,371 which is far less than that reported by the mainstream media. Their researcher tracked down the number to a Freedom of Information request sent to the ONS. The reply came back on 16 December 2021 and looking at the various spreadsheets gives interesting background. Firstly the figure is for England and Wales and the ONS figure to the end of 2021 is 18,907. Secondly these are simply deaths with no other pre-existing condition written on the death certificate.
  So people with diabetes, dementia or Alzheimers, high blood pressure, urinary infection, obesity or asthma for example before they contracted COVID are not counted. To be fair if ‘old age’ was put down as well as COVID these were actually counted as COVID-only deaths. In summary the figure given on social media is meaningless as people with these conditions were not expected to die of them but did die because they contracted COVID-19.
  To the end of 2021 deaths recorded in England and Wales as involving COVID were 159,753; if 18,907 were COVID alone, then 140,846 were people who were vulnerable because of other health conditions. A quote from a website called MENAFN.com:
  

  To argue that the deaths from COVID of people with pre-existing conditions don’t count as true COVID deaths is to say that people with pre-existing conditions don’t matter; that their lives are expendable and shouldn’t be considered when assessing the impact of the pandemic. Over 140,000 people with pre-existing conditions have died of COVID in the last two years. We should be mourning this tragic loss of life, not minimising it.

• 31st January UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid tells the House of Commons he is considering scrapping the mandatory vaccination requirement for NHS and care home staff if Parliament approves the change. Around 40,000 people lost their jobs in November when the rule came in for care home staff and around 77,000 NHS unvaccinated healthcare workers are likely to follow if the law is not changed. BBC News summarises the FORs and AGAINSTs making vaccinations mandatory.
  FOR Vaccines save lives AGAINST Civil liberty resistance worldwide
  FOR No other options left AGAINST Improved access to jabs still needed
  FOR Higher take-up avoids damaging lockdowns AGAINST Encourage conspiracy theories.
  FACTCHECK: In the UK some frontline healthcare workers are required to have the Hepatitis B vaccine, this is not law but rather hospital trusts enacting workplace health and safety and occupational health policies. In the US healthcare workers at any facility that receives funding from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services must be vaccinated by 4 January 2022, unless granted a medical or religious exception. A Memorandum from the Secretary of Defense of 24 August 2021 requires military personnel to be vaccinated by various deadlines unless granted a medical or religious exception. Noncitizens traveling to the United States by airplane must be vaccinated by the date of entry. Exceptions include persons under age 18, airplane crews, diplomats, permanent residents, citizens of one of 43 nations with limited vaccine availability, persons issued exemptions due to humanitarian or national security reasons, vaccine trial participants, and those with documented medical contraindications to vaccination.
  
  NHS England is beginning to roll out vaccinations this week to vulnerable children between 5 and 11, the i newspaper reports. There are about 500,000 eligible children who are either in a clinical risk group or live with someone who is immuno-suppressed. Scotland began these vaccinations last week.
• 1st February The UK Government COVID case figures released yesterday including reinfection cases from 1/1/2021 to date is 837,426 cases. This is worked out from cumulative totals 17,315,893 - 16,478,467. However the daily figure given yesterday was 92,368. So around 750,000 cases last year were reinfections.
  On the UK COVID online dashboard this note appears: From 31 January 2022, UKHSA COVID-19 case reporting has changed to an episode-based definition which includes possible reinfections. This means that from 1 February 2022 deaths will be reported using the new episode-based case definition in England, including deaths following possible reinfections. From this point, reported deaths in people with COVID-19 (within 28 or 60 days of positive test) are considered from the first positive specimen date of the most recent episode of infection, rather than an individual’s first ever positive specimen date. Deaths by date of death have today been revised back to the beginning of the pandemic but historical deaths by report date have not been revised, so there is a step increase in the cumulative numbers of deaths on 1 February.
  [Ed. My UK Progress chart shows deaths by report date and the figure for today is 1,121. This is worked out from cumulative totals 156,875 - 155,754. However the daily figure for deaths given today is 219. So around 900 COVID deaths last year were not reported at the time.]
• 3rd February
• 4th February The Anchorage Daily News includes an Associated Press item. “New cases of COVID-19 in the US are falling in at least 49 out of 50 states as omicron rapidly loosens its grip even as the nation’s death toll closes in on another bleak round number: 900,000”
  The UKHSA issues a blog today explaining the changing of the COVID case definition.
• 4th February Reuters News Agency reports that last Thursday the CEO of Afrigen Biologics Company in South Africa says the company has used the publicly available sequence of the Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to make its own version of the shot which could be tested on humans by the end of this year. It is the first mRNA vaccine to be designed, developed and produced at lab scale on the African continent.
  WHO last year picked a consortium including Afrigen for a pilot project to give poor and middle-income countries the know-how to make COVID jabs, after Pfizer, BionTedch and Moderna declined to share their technology and expertise. Last September Reuters said that more than three quarters of the 5.5 billion COVID-19 shots administered worldwide had gone to high and upper-middle income countries, which make up just over a third of the world’s population.
• 9th February A TV programme on BBC2 this evening is called AtraZeneca: A Vaccine for the World. The BBC Medical Editor Fergus Walsh interviews key people including Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert at Oxford and the AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot. various points came up as previously noted in this diary such as the hiatus following the reports of blood clots and the UK politicians emphasising a great British success whereas the Oxford scientists wanted to make it a vaccine for the world by supplying it to COVAX at cost and having a vaccine that only required simple refrigeration. One fact that was new is that the US FDA has still not approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for use in America Checking this out, Reuters published the following last December:

  Dec 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized the use of AstraZeneca’s (AZN.L) antibody cocktail to prevent COVID-19 infections in individuals with weak immune systems or a history of severe side effects from coronavirus vaccines.
  The antibody cocktail, Evusheld, is only authorized for adults and adolescents who are not currently infected with the novel coronavirus and have not recently been exposed to an infected individual, the regulator said.
  The authorization for the therapy, made up of two monoclonal antibodies tixagevimab and cilgavimab, marks a significant step for AstraZeneca, whose widely used COVID-19 vaccine is yet to be approved by U.S. authorities.
  AstraZeneca last month had agreed to supply the U.S. government with 700,000 doses of Evusheld ...

  
  On 31 January the FDA fully approved a second COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine formerly known as Moderna COVID-19 will be marketed as ‘Spikevax’. The FDA previously fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech branded version, Comirnaty, on August 23, 2021. Both vaccines had previously been supplied under Emergency Use Authorisation and no change has been made to either vaccine’s formula.
• 12th February African Arguments website, published by the Royal Africa Society based at London University, School of Oriental and African Studies, shows this summary map. Right click to view full-size or .
  Previously recorded on 18 December 2021 with the same countries with the highest vaccination rates.
• 19th February The New York Times publishes these graphs online. Right click to view full-size or .
  
• 20th February BBC News reports the Queen (95) has tested positive for COVID-19 with only slight symptoms. Her son Prince Charles (73) had COVID on 10 February, his second infection, and his wife the Duchess of Cornwall(74) on 14 February.
• 21st February 4.30pm The UK Prime Minister makes a statement in the House of Commons on ‘Living with COVID’ (11 mins). The legal requirements for testing, contact-tracing, self-isolation and mask-wearing will all be removed by 1st April. Medical advice seems to be divided and the Labour Opposition in the House disagreed with the proposal calling it “reckless” and making things more difficult for clinically vulnerable people.
• Thursday 24th February From today the legal requirement for people to self-isolate if testing positive for COVID-19 is ended. Also masks are not required by law to be worn in indoor settings. However Government guidelines still recommend these measures to reduce transmaission of the virus.
  The world is distracted as this morning the Russian President Vladimir Putin orders the Russian army to attack Ukraine.
• 1st March UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid announces that the mandatory requirement for all health workers in contact with patients to be vaccinated against COVID which was due to come into force on 1 April has now been revoked. A survey was carried out among health professionals and the public and the results of this together with the less severe Omicron strain being now dominant have led to this decision.
• 7th March
  An update to 16th November 2021 chart. Right click to view full-size or The UK has improved its world ranking.
• 8th March The latest world figures from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland show another sad milestone - over 6 million deaths worldwide. Right click to view the dashboard full-size or
  
• 11th March These are the Government dashboard graphs for UK hospitals today.
  
• Monday 14th March The Guardian online reports that the UK Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, says that, although the the Office for National Statistics Covid-19 Infections Survey shows an increase in cases across the whole of the UK, we are in a “very good position” and rising infection rates were to be “expected’. There were 72,898 new cases of Covid-19 reported in the UK on Friday. On 24 February, when most of the remaining Covid-19 restrictions in England ended, there were 38,933 cases reported. There are also almost 12,000 people in hospital in the UK with Covid-19.
• 18th March Widely reported today that COVID infections are 1 in 25 people in Wales, 1 in 20 people in England and 1 in 14 people in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
  All remaining COVID-19 travel restrictions were lifted today. A range of “contingency measures” may be applied if needed, to take “swift and proportionate action” to tackle new variants, the Department for Transport said. This applies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland but in Scotland the requirement to wear a face mask while on flights is still in place.
• 19th March The Week magazine quotes John Rintoul in the Independent. A new study has been published in the Lancet, Britain’s premier medical journal. It compares “excess deaths” data across 191 nations, looking at how many more deaths occurred in each country in 2020 and 2021 than would have been expected in a non-pandemic year. Given the very different ways in which countries have logged COVID fatalities, this is the best comparative measure we have. And on this measure the UK didn’t do too badly at all. Our excess deaths of 127 per 100,000 is a shade over the global average of 120 - worse, it’s true, than Sweden (91) and Ireland (just 13), but far better than Italy (227), Portugal (202), Belgium (147) and the US (179), and in line with France (124) and Germany (121).
• 23th March In the UK the second anniversary of the first COVID lockdoen is commemorated by a National Day of Reflection. There is a memorial concert at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. A minute’s silence is held at midday as one of several events organised by end-of-life charity, Marie Curie.
  The National Covid Memorial Wall in London is a public mural painted by volunteers to commemorate victims of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. Started in March 2021 and stretching more than one-third mile (five hundred metres) along the South Bank of the River Thames, opposite the Palace of Westminster, and just outside St Thomas’ Hospital, the mural consists of thousands of red and pink hearts, one heart for each of the approximately 150,000 casualties of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom at the time of the mural’s commencement.
  The Express online reports that airline easyJet has said mask wearing will now be a personal choice for travellers from 27 March. Masks must still be worn if it is a legal requirement in the departure or arrival airport. According to Which? online, face masks are still required on flights with Air Canada, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Emirates Airline, KLM, Ryanair, Qantas and United Airlines. British Airways, Jet2, TUI and Virgin Atlantic have relaxed the rule.
• 24th March Professor Chris Whitty gave the keynote speech at a conference organised by the Local Government Association and The Association of Directors of Public Health yesterday. His words were reported in the i newspaper. He said that the rising hospitalisations are as a result of the Omicron sub-variant BA.2 will probably continue for at least another two weeks:
  The pandemic is going to become over time less dominant steadily but we’re going to have a significant problem with it in multiple parts of the world for the rest of our lives. Let’s have no illusions about that.
  I’m expecting it to be probably, in the UK, seasonal but interspersed, at least for the next two or three years, by new variants while it is still evolving essentially to adapt to humans, which may occur in between seasonal peaks.
  Professor Whitty pointed to Hong Kong, which is going through its worst phase of the pandemic with hospitals struggling to cope. as an example of why COVID has a long way to run. This is a slide from his presentation. Right click to view full-size or .
  [Ed. The Delta variant comprises 200 different sub-variants. The Omicron variant has lineages BA.1, BA.2, BA.3 and B.1.1.529. Sub-variant BA.1 accounts for most of the world cases but BA.2 was first detected in the Philippines in November and is spreading. While BA.1 and BA.2 are similar, they are 20 mutations apart. Studies in Denmark indicate that BA.2 is “substantially”" more transmissible than BA.1.]
• Sunday 27th March With worldwide deaths from COVID being over 6 million, there are 11 countries which have each lost over 100,000 people to the virus. They are widely spread across the globe.
  
  
  United States

  India

  Russia

  Peru

  United Kingdom

  Italy

  Indonesia

  France

  Iran

  Colombia

  Germany

     976,660

     521,004

     360,021

     212,102

     165,046

     158,700

     154,343

     142,664

     140,021

     139,558

     127,599

  Data: Center for Systems Science and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, Maryland (subject to the accuracy of information supplied by the various countries).

• Friday 1st April At 4.22 pm today BBC News online reports: Covid: Record 4.9 million people have the virus in the UK This is not the daily figure of new cases but an estimate of the number of infected people in the UK in each week. Week endung 19 March was 4.3 million, week ending 26th March is 4.9 million. The graph shows how the number of total infections varied from the beginning of the pandemic. It was falling after the post-Christmas peak in early January but the number shot up since 24 February due to easing of restrictions and the spread of the more transmissable variant.
  The supply of free test kits ends today except for vulnerable people.
  The percentage of the population with COVID is 7.6% (1in 13) in England, 8.6% (1 in 12) in Scotland, 7.0% (1 in 14) in Wales and 6.7% (1 in 15) in Northern Ireland.
  Following Professor Tim Spector’s research study last year [see 8 July 2021], the NHS has revised it’s symptom list for COVID-19 infection. On the NHS website, “Symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19)” it says these can include:
  

  ⬤ a high temperature or shivering (chills) – a high temperature means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature)

  ⬤ a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours

  ⬤ a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste

  ⬤ shortness of breath

  ⬤ feeling tired or exhausted

  ⬤ an aching body

  ⬤ a headache

  ⬤ a sore throat

  ⬤ a blocked or runny nose

  ⬤ loss of appetite

  ⬤ diarrhoea

  ⬤ feeling sick or being sick

  
  The symptoms apply to adults and children. It adds “The symptoms are very similar to symptoms of other illnesses, such as colds and flu.”
• 10th April  [Editor’s Note: Since the conference last November, the pandemic has taken attention away from the climate change issue. And since 24th February, the war in Ukraine has taken attention away from the pandemic. The civilians are on the streets of Mariupol, in Southern Ukraine.
  An effect of the war is soaring energy prices causing the UK Consumer Prices Index, the measure of inflation, to rise by 7.0% in the 12 months to March 2022. At present Europe relies on Russian oil and gas for its energy and UK and EU sanctions on Russia may lead to threats to cut back supplies.]
• 11th April
• 12th April Two charts from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showing data from the start of the pandemic. First cases/100,000 people by state, then deaths/100,000 by state.
  
  
  Alaska and North Dakota both had more than 30,000 cases per 100,000 people.
  
  
  Arizona and Mississippi both had more than 400 deaths per 100,000 people.
• 13th April  From the Government COVID website: In line with weekday only reporting, the dashboard will not be updated over the bank holiday weekend. Following the update on Thursday 14 April, the next update will be on Tuesday 19 April.
  An article by Tom Bawden in the i newspaper today draws attention to the discrepancy between the ONS graph (shown on 1 April above) and the Government daily case numbers which show infections falling. The Government figures have always underestimated the true extent of the virus as they are based solely on reported positive tests. People who are infected but choose either not to test themselves in minor cases or to test but not to report the infection will be left out. The number of people taking and reporting tests has dropped off dramatically in recent weeks for three main reasons:
  

  1. At the end of February the legal obligation for people testing positive to self-isolate was removed. People do not need to be off work and losing pay with mild symptoms and there is no incentive to test or report an infection.

  2. At the end of March, supply of free test kits stopped in England. Having to buy the kits is a disincentive to testing yourself.

  3. The Omicron infection is recognised generally as only causing mild illness in most cases so there is a sense it does not matter so much if people catch and spread it.

  
  [Ed. Since Government daily cases figures do not now usefully relate to actual cases, the Cases graph on the UK Progress Chart (link below) will not be updated after the Easter holiday break.]
• 14th April  The spread of the virus shown by the rolling rate per 100,000 people in the administrative areas of the UK updated from 23 December 2021.
  
  
  The New Scientist magazine reports that the US has extended its COVID-19 public health emergency status which was initially declared in January 2020 and has been extended every quarter since. It was due to expire on April 16. The renewal allows people continued access to free COVID-19 tests, vaccinations and treatments for at least another three months.
  The UK MHRA Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency  has approved the Valneva vaccine (based on a whole inactivated form of the SARS-Cov-2A virus) for people aged 18 to 50 years. The vaccine can be stored for up to a year in a standard fridge.
• Friday 15th April  Start of Easter weekend in the UK.
• 16th April The UK Department of Health and Social Care posted this on Twitter today.
  
  In the i newspaper today there is an interview with Professor Tim Spector of Kings College, London, who runs the ZOE COVID study app. which now has around 4.5 million users in the UK, Sweden and the US. Among the points he makes are:
  * It may take five or six years for the pandemic to subside to a level of severity similar to current influenza infections.
  * He expects COVID infections to drop to around 50,000 per day through the summer but to rise in the autumn when children go back to school after the summer holidays.
  * Because the virus will be able to mutate more rapidly as so many people are infected, he anticipates that a new variant will appear, able to evade our immune system response, and replace Omicron as the dominant strain.
  * He says that we are not talking about the risk of ‘Long COVID’ any more and it is a serious concern for the NHS and businesses who have staff off work because of its effects.
  The Government should say to the public ‘it’s your civic duty to stay at home when you’ve got cold-like symptoms and not infect people. Just because it might be like a cold for you, it’s not going to be like a cold for everyone. It could end up with someone being off work for a year’.
  
• 18th April  [Ed. Since Government daily cases figures do not now usefully relate to actual cases, the Cases graphs on the Herefordshire and Ledbury Progress Charts (links below) will not be updated after the Easter holiday break.]
• 21st April Her Majesty the Queen is 96 today.
• 29th April An ONS table showing estimated infections as percentages of the populations in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for 2022. Now considered more useful that NHS figures and shows rise and fall of infection levels. Right click to view full-size or .
  
• 30th April A Matt Pritchett cartoon quoted in The Week magazine today.
  
• 9th May Johns Hopkins University reports the total number of US COVID-related deaths is close to a million people. The figure they give is 997,539. The US CDC figure is 995,023. The New York Times has 996,283. With deaths per day at around 350 people the 1 million mark may be reached in about two weeks.
  
  BBC Online introduces another measure to show the effect of COVID on the countries of the world. “There’s no international standard for measuring deaths or their causes, and countries record deaths in different ways, which makes comparison difficult. But experts say one of the most accurate measures is how many extra deaths are recorded in a country above the number that would have been expected to die in an average year. Many countries publish excess death data, but some poorer nations don’t or do it far less frequently.
  The WHO has published a report calculating every country’s excess death count for 2020 and 2021. This measure takes into account deaths not directly due to Covid, but as a consequence of the pandemic, such as people being unable to access hospitals for the care they needed.” The excess deaths in the 13 worst-hit countries are shown on this BBC chart.
  
• 10th May CTV News reports that World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tells a media briefing today that China’s zero-tolerance COVID-19 policy is not sustainable given what is now known of the virus, in rare public comments by the UN agency on a government’s handling of the pandemic. He says they they have discussed this issue with Chinese experts. He also noted that China has registered 15,000 deaths since the virus first emerged in the city of Wuhan in late 2019 - a relatively low number compared with nearly 1 million in the United States, more than 664,000 in Brazil and over 524,000 in India.
  Reuters News Agency reports that China’s zero-COVID policy has led to a cycle of lockdowns of many millions of people. Shanghai’s lockdown began on 28th March. The day before the city had recorded 3,450 asymptomatic cases, 70% of the nationwide total that day, as well as another 50 symptomatic cases. Shanghai’'s measures, affecting 26 million people, have been particularly strict Residents are allowed out of compounds only for exceptional reasons, such as a medical emergency. According to social media posts and local government notices circulating online, in several parts of the city entire appartment blocks have been deemed a health risk, with all occupants forced from their homes and placed into quarantine on the back of one positive case.
• 15th May My wife and I had our fourth coronavirus jab (spring booster) at the pharmacy in a nearby town, Bromyard. We tested ourselves to ensure we were free of the virus before going.
  We were given this spring booster guide leaflet (PDF) and the Moderna Spikevax package leaflet (PDF). As people over 75 years of age, we have now had two AZ (adenoviral vector), one Pfizer Comirnaty (mRNA) and one Moderna Spikevax (mRNA) vaccinations.
• 18th May The Northern Ireland Dept. of Health announces it will not be publishing a daily dashboard of COVID statistics after Friday 20th May.
• 20th May The NI decision to stop publishing COVID data means UK headline figures for these topics will not be updated. From today the UK daily totals of cases and deaths are not being published on the gov.uk dashboard. Healthcare data is problematical. For ‘Patients admitted to hospital’ a note says: Data are not updated every day by all 4 nations (England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland). Figures are not comparable as Wales includes suspected COVID-19 patients while the other nations include only confirmed cases. For ‘Patients in hospital’ a note says: Data from England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland may not be directly comparable as data about COVID-19 patients in hospitals are collected differently. Data are not reported by each nation every day.
  
  [Ed. From today my UK charts are discontinued.]
• 22nd May Our World in Data has this graph for daily confirmed cases in China. The Shanghai lockdown seems to have worked and the government has said that restrictions will be eased in June.
  
• 27th May yahoo!sport website publishes this ONS data graph for etimated COVID infections in the UK population showing the number falling to 1.1 million in the week to 21 May.
  The proportion of the populations in the parts of the UK in the week to 21 May are:
      England 1 in 60 people
      Scotland 1 in 40
      Wales 1 in 55
      Northern Ireland 1 in 80.
• 1st June The UK ONS Office for National Statistics  reports that around 2 milllion people (3% of the UK population) have ‘Long COVID’. This is defined as having COVID-19 symptoms more than four weeks from recovering from the infection, the symptoms not being explained by something else. The number has been increasing steadily since this time last year as shown on this graph.
  The figure is based on a survey of nearly 300,000 people who reported having COVID at various times over the last two years. Of the most common symptoms 55% of people reported fatigue, 32% shortness of breath, 23% a cough and 23% muscle ache. Altogether around three-quarters reported that it was affecting their day-to-day activities.
  Public Health Scotland (PHS) announces it will move to weekly COVID-19 reporting from Wednesday 08 June 2022. This follows changes to testing policy in Scotland that came into effect from 01 May 2022. The reduction in the quantity and quality of available daily data limits the utility of daily reporting. As a result, PHS is moving to weekly COVID-19 reporting, which is more typical for respiratory infection surveillance and more appropriate as Scotland transitions from the emergency response phase of the pandemic to living with endemic COVID-19. PHS will also cease reporting of COVID-19 deaths within 28 days of a first positive test, instead signposting to NRS National Records of Scotland  death certificate data as the single data source for COVID-19 deaths data in Scotland.
• 2nd June The ONS reports that the estimated percentage of the community population (those not in hospitals, care homes or other institutional settings) that had COVID-19 in the week to 2 June are:
      797,500 (1 in 70 people) in England
      124,100 (1 in 40 people) in Scotland
      40,500 (1 in 75 people) in Wales
      27,700 (1 in 65 people) in Northern Ireland
  
• 9th June
  Right click to enlarge or
  
• 10th June The ONS reports that COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in 2021 for all people and was the second leading cause of death for males and females separately. Males had slightly more deaths from Ischaemic heart diseases and the third cause was Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, females had definitely most deaths from Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and the third cause was Ischaemic heart diseases.
  These are the UK Government dashboard graphs for UK hospitals today.
  The UK Guardian newspaper reports that after the Omicron variant BA.1 emerged last November, variant BA.2 arrived in April this year. It is now declining and two more transmissable variants, BA.4 and BA.5, are on the rise. BA.5 is spreading around the world, particularly in Portugal and Germany, and at the end of May made up 14% of COVID virus genomes analysed in England. In the US, the Providence Journal reports today that the latest weekly CDC report says that 7.2% of new COVID cases in New England involve the latest two variants.
  USA Today makes general points from ‘experts’ that the US is undergoing a sixth wave of COVID cases. Many people who avoided the virus are getting it for the first time because pandemic fatigue has set in and more people are socialising and not wearing masks. With vaccinations, many cases are mild but at intervals a severe case appears in the most vunerable individuals. Herd immunity has not been reached as the variants show some ability to evade the immune system and cause reinfection.
  The Indian Express reports that “the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron sub-variants are making their presence felt across various areas in the country with the daily Covid tally now showing a rise in the country. When contacted, Dr Soumya Swaminathan, WHO chief scientist, told The Indian Express that it could be the start of a mini wave. The sub-variants that are emerging are more transmissible than the original Omicron BA.1 and there is a likelihood of waning immunity. It is a possibility that there could be mini waves every four-six months or so and hence, apart from all Covid-appropriate precautionary measures that need to be taken, it is important to also track the variants Dr Swaminathan said.
  UK Parliamenmt website reports today that the Government accepts or partially accepts majority of MPs’ recommendations contained in the report of the joint parliamentary inquiry into the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The Government response published today says that the Government accepts or partially accepts the majority of the inquiry’s 38 recommendations.
• Sunday 12th June Simon Calder in the UK Independent newspaper last Friday reported that, from 12:01am EDT (5:01am BST) today, the US health regulator, the CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  is allowing the requirement for a negative pre-departure COVID test for international travellers entering the country by air to expire. However travellers must have had “all recommended doses in their primary series of Covid-19 vaccine”. There is no requirement to have had a third booster jab.
  African Arguments website, published by the Royal Africa Society based at London University, School of Oriental and African Studies, shows this summary map. Right click to view full-size or .
  Previously recorded on 12 February with the same countries with the highest vaccination rates. Still the Congo appears the worst country with around 1.5 vaccinations per 100 people and the WHO World Health Organisation  reports that as of 29 May 2022, a total of 831,318 vaccine doses have been administered.
  Previous issues show Africa vaccinations slowly increasing: 28 Sept. 149M, 18 Dec. 280M, 12 Feb. 367M, 12 June 518M.
• 16th June UK Parliament website reports that in its response, published today, the Government accepts or partially accepts the majority of 38 recommendations made in the Report  “Coronavirus: lessons learned to date” published in October 2021.  In a joint statement, Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP, Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, and Rt Hon Greg Clark MP, Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, said: “It will now be vital for the Government to put its words of acceptance into actions to ensure that our scientific, health and care sectors are better prepared to meet any future threats.”
  In the Report this timeline of the pandemic is given up to August 2021.
  
• 17th June The ONS reports that the estimated percentage of the community population (those not in hospitals, care homes or other institutional settings) that had COVID-19 in the week to 11 June are:
      1,131,000 (1 in 50 people) in England
      176,900 (1 in 30 people) in Scotland
      64,800 (1 in 45 people) in Wales
      42,999 (1 in 45 people) in Northern Ireland
  
  This is a substantial incease on the figures on 2 June. The week follows on from the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Weekend when over 60k people registered to host Big Jubilee Lunches, and many social events were held.
  
• 18th June Our World in Data gives this graph comparing two of the worst hit countries, the US and UK.
  PBS News Hour reports that in the US most states and cities dropped their masking requirements in February and early March following new guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that put less focus on case counts and more on hospital capacity. The CDC said at that time that with the virus in retreat, most Americans could safely take off their masks. However on 18 April Philadelphia became the first major U.S. city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate after reporting a sharp increase in coronavirus infections, with the city’s health commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole, saying she wanted to forestall a potential new wave driven by an omicron subvariant.
  Radio Havana Cuba online reports that the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) gives a figure of 9,969,774 Cubans as being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (90% of the population) and in Cuba 8,529 people have died from complications associated with the disease.
  Last September it was reported in this diary that, despite American sanctions causing production difficulties, Cuba had developed two vaccines in Havana. Both Soberana 02 and Abdala are similar to the US Novavax consisting of nanoparticles generating spike-protein specific antibodies. Vaccinations of adults had begun last May and children aged 2 to 18 in September. The Washington Post today gives details of the vaccines.
  Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus were developed by Vicente Vérez, head of the Finlay Vaccine Institute in Havana. This vaccine is now also being produced at the Pasteur Institue of Iran in Tehran under the name PasteurCoVac having been approved by Iranian regulators. A course of Soberana vaccine requires two doses of Soberana 02 followed by a booster of Soberana Plus. In the Plus version the spike protein is not attached to tetanus toxoid.
  Abdala was developed by a team from the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana led by Gerardo Guillén, director of Biomedical Research. It requires two doses and is used for adults. Both vaccines do not need ultra-low temperature storage making distribution easier.
  At the BioHabana 2022 Congress in April 2022, Guillén announced that he is also working on a single-dose nasally administered vaccine named Mambisa which is a combination of two recombinant proteins: the RBD of the SARS-CoV-2 spike and the nucleocapsid of the hepatitis B virus.
• 27th June Figures from statista.com for COVID-19 deaths by countries having over 100,000 deaths recorded.
  
• 29th June The New York Times coronavirus tracker shows this chart for deaths per 100,000 in local areas of England and Scotland. Wales and Northern Ireland stopped publishing figures in May. Right click to enlarge or .
  On More or Less on BBC Radio 4 this morning Tim Harford spoke to Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter who gives his view of the ongoing pandemic.
  
• 29th June The UK ONS has this graph for deaths registered where COVID is stated on the death certificate as contributing to the death.
  
• 30th June yahoo!sport website publishes this ONS data graph for estimated COVID infections in the UK population showing the number rising to 2.3 million in the week to 25 June.
  The Serum Institute of India is seeking Government approval to export 32.4 lakh doses of the Covid-19 jab Covovax under the brand name Nuvaxovid to the US, which will be the first vaccine to be exported to the country by any Indian manufacturer, official sources said on Thursday. According to a communication sent to the government by Prakash Kumar Singh, Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs at the SII, the shipment is likely to be dispatched on July 3 if due approval come in time, an official source told PTI Press Trust of India . In August 2020, the US-based vaccine maker Novavax Inc had announced a licence agreement with SII for the development and commercialisation of NVX-CoV2373, its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, in India and low and middle-income countries.
  Elsewhere a total of over 5 lakh (525,116) coronavirus-linked deaths have been reported so far in the country. [The Indian numbering system is 1 lakh = 100,000. 1 crore = 1,00,00,000 or 10 million]
  On the UK Government dashboard this message appears: “From Friday 1 July 2022, the COVID-19 Dashboard will move to weekly reporting. The last daily update of the Dashboard will be on Friday 1 July 2022. Weekly updates will be published every Wednesday at 4pm commencing on 6 July 2022.”
  Using the ONS population estimates for mid-2020, the death rate from COVID-19 in the nations of the UK are:

  	Population	Total Deaths    to date	Deaths per 100,000 people
  England	56,550,138	166,323	294
  Scotland	5,466,000	14,953	271
  Wales	3,169,586	10,405	328
  N.Ireland	1,895,510	4,623	243
  UK	67,081,234	196,324	292

  
  
• 4th July In the online journal, The Conversation, today Professor Adrian Esterman of the University of South Australia summarises the situation in Australia.
  Australia is heading for its third Omicron wave in the coming weeks, as BA.4 and BA.5 become the dominant COVID strains. BA.4 and BA.5 are more infectious than previous COVID variants and subvariants, and are better able to evade immunity from vaccines and previous infections. So we’re likely to see a rise in case numbers. ... We measure how contagious a disease is by the basic reproduction number (R0). This is the average number of people an initial case infects in a population with no immunity (from vaccines or previous infection). New mutations give the virus an advantage if they can increase transmissibility:
  the original Wuhan strain has an R0 of 3.3
  Delta has an R0 of 5.1
  Omicron BA.1 has an R0 of 9.5
  BA.2, which is the dominant subvariant in Australia at the moment, is 1.4 times more transmissible than BA.1, and so has an R0 of about 13.3
  a pre-print publication from South Africa suggests BA.4/5 has a growth advantage over BA.2 similar to the growth advantage of BA.2 over BA.1. That would give it an R0 of 18.6.
  This is similar to measles, which was until now was our most infectious viral disease. ... BA.4/BA.5 appear to be masters at evading immunity. This increases the chance of reinfection which is is defined as a new infection at least 12 weeks after the first. This gap is in place because many infected people still shed virus particles many weeks after recovery. Likely, there are now tens of thousands of Australians into their second or third infections, and this number will only get bigger with BA.4/5. ... If things get bad enough, state and territory governments might be forced to reintroduce face mask mandates in many settings – in my opinion, not such a bad thing.
• 5th July UK Health & Social Care Secretary, Sajid Javid, resigns from the Government and is replaced by Steve Barclay, formerly Chief of Staff at No. 10 Downing Street. In his letter of resignation reproduced on Twitter Sajid Javid said that he had lost confidence in the Prime Minister. This follows a recent Conservative Party Vote of Confidence where 211 MP’s voted for him, but 148 voted against him. [This loss of confidence in his leadership was a reaction to illegal parties being held at Downing Street during COVID lockdowns involving individuals being fined, including the PM, and his misleading Parliament by lying in the House of Commons on various subjects - most recently his denial of any knowledge of MP Chris Pincher’s sexual improprieties when he appointed him Deputy Chief Whip for the Conservative Party. This was proved to be untrue.]
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, also resigned today citing loss of confidence in the PMs integrity. He is replaced by Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary and former Minister for Vaccine Deployment.
• 5th July A further 22 government ministers (all Conservative MPs) resign today:
  Stuart Andrew - Housing Minister

  Edward Argar - Health Minister

  Victoria Atkins - Justice Minister
  Kemi Badenoch - Equalities and Local Government Minister

  Jo Churchill - Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food a& Rural Affairs

  Alex Burghart - Apprenticeship & Skills Minister

  James Cartlidge - Courts Minister

  Mims Davies - Work and Pensions Minister

  George Freeman - Scence Minister

  Mike Freer - Under-Secretary of State for Exports at the Department for International Trade

  John Glen - Minister of State at the Treasury

  Simon Hart - Secretary of State for Wales

  Damian Hinds - Security Minister

  Julia Lopez - Minister of State at the Department for Digital Infrastructure, Culture, Media and Sport

  Rachel Maclean - Home Office Minister

  Neil O’Brien - Minister for Levelling Up, The Union and Constitution

  Guy Opperman - Pensions Minister

  Chris Philp - Minister for Technology and Digital Economy

  Will Quince - Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families at the Department of Education

  Lee Rowley - Minister for Industry

  Robin Walker - Schools Minister

  Helen Whately - Treasury Minister

• 7th July Following 50 resignations of ministers, Personal Private Secretaries and trade envoys yesterday, the Daily Express online tweets this picture this morning.
  Boris Johnson resigns as leader of the Conservative Party. In his resignation speech at 12.30pm today outside No 10 Downing Street Boris Johnson blames the “herd instinct’ in Parliament and said he would stay on in office until a new Prime Minister is appointed. About 30 MPs stood in Downing Street to support him.
  The Zoe COVID Study has identified the six most common symptoms after 2 vaccinations, given in order are: Runny nose, Headache, Sneezing, Sore throat, Persistent cough and Loss of smell. Additional new symptoms includes mouth ulcers, coated tongue and rashes on the body and fingers and toes.
  
• 8th July The Daily Telegraph reports that four key figures in public health in the time of the pandemic received honours given to them in the 2022 New Year Honours list from Prince William at Buckingham Palace yesterday. Professor Sir Paul Nurse, geneticist and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute, was made a Companion of Honour, Dr. Jenny Harries, Chief Executive of the UK Health Security Agency received an OBE, Professor Kevin Fenton, Regional Director, Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, Department for Health and Social Care, and Regional Director, Public Health, NHS London received a CBE and Professor Jonathan Nguyen-Van-Tam, Deputy Chief Medical Officer, was knighted.
• Sunday 10th July For comparison with the UK figures for 30th June, here are today’s figures for Australia (from covidlive.com.au).
  

  	Population	Total Deaths    to date	Deaths per 100,000 people
  New South Wales	8,095,400	3,707	45
  Victoria	6,559,900	4,075	62
  Queensland	5,265,000	1,323	25
  South Australia	1,806,600	552	30
  Western Australia	2,762,200	421	15
  Tasmania	569,800	101	17
  Northern Territory	249,300	53	21
  Australian Capital Terrritory	453,300	82	19
  Australia	25,766,600	10,314	40

  
  The situation in New Zealand (2021 population estimate from StatsNZ).
  

  	Population	Total Deaths    to date	Deaths per 100,000 people
  New Zealand	5,122,600	1,671	33

  
  The NZHerald online is reporting that the WHO World Health Organisation  is monitoring a new COVID sub-variant. Officially named BA.2.75 and nicknamed “centaurus”. Found mainly in India, it has also been reported in nine other countries including Austalia and New Zealand, Japan, Canada, Germany, the US and the UK. It has eight mutations beyond BA.5.
  The US death rate by state published by the CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  on Friday 8th July. Their webpage reports that “Beginning July 4, 2022, COVID Data Tracker will discontinue daily data refreshes 7 days per week, and will instead refresh data Monday through Friday.”
  
• 14th July At Prime Minister’s Question Time today the Prime Minister fails to answer two questions from Sir Keir Starmer, Leader of the Opposition, and instead defends his record in government. [Ed. Parliament is in recess (on holiday) from 21 July to 5 September so it is unlikely any health policies will change during this period.]
  
  
• 14th July In an interview with the i newspaper, Professor Karl Friston of University College of London, Queen Square Institute of Neurology reports that the effectiveness of COVID jabs is falling more quickly with the latest variants.  The current peak in prevalence is quite remarkable. Our modelling points to immune escape as one of the key factors in the current resurgence: particularly, a declining protection against getting infected. The efficacy of vaccines in preventing infection has declined sharply in the past months. Crucially, the protection against getting seriously ill or dying does not appear to be falling in the same way, which means we might expect to see a lots of infections but a less marked increase in hospital admissions or fatalities. As a result, vaccinations remain key.
  Tim Spector, the King’s College London professor who runs the ZOE app agrees and told the i last week  There is very little lasting immunity, past a couple of months. So they [BA.4 and BA.5] can just infect people who have already been infected with other variants much better. It’s quite rare, although not unheard of, to be getting infections every two months. But quite a lot of people are now getting them every three or four months. It’s not offering the protection that we thought it would do.
  Vaccines available in the UK are ineffective at preventing infection because they were based on the early strains of Covid. The Government is planning an autumn 2022 booster campaign using vaccines developed to handle the omicron variants.
• 15th July Released today the UK infection estimate according to ONS is still rising.
  
• Sunday 17th July ITV weather forecast at 1:34pm today.
  
  The link to coronavirus is that pressure on hospitals from patients with heatstroke will add to hospitalisations due to COVID-19 which are increasing in the UK. Also ambulances are having increased waiting times outside A&E units over recent weeks due to shortage of available hospital beds.
• 19th July indie_SAGE Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies  publishes “A seven point plan to suppress covid infections and reduce disruptions” in the British Medical Journal. The seven points are:
  
  1. Clear and consistent messaging concerning covid risk and risk mitigation, reinforced by public statements by those in positions of authority.
  2. Increased efforts to promote vaccine uptake, among all age groups, and with particular emphasis on groups among whom uptake has been low, in particular ethnic minority communities. This should be coupled with a clear long term plan to address waning immunity and immune escape by new variants.
  3. Installing and/or upgrading ventilation/air filtration in all public buildings, with schools an urgent priority over the summer holidays.
  4. Provision of free lateral-flow tests to enable everyone to follow existing public health guidelines.
  5. Financial and other support for all workers to self-isolate if infected.
  6. Systematic promotion of the use of FFP2/FFP3 masks in indoor public spaces and public transport when infection rates are high.
  7. Increased support for the equitable global provision of vaccines and anti-virals.
  If implemented, these measures will make it possible for people to make informed decisions that will reduce the risk of illness to them, their families, and the communities in which they live and work. By reducing infections they will also reduce the disruption to the lives of individuals and society.
  Independent SAGE was set up in May 2020. The chair is Deenan Pillay, Professor of Virology at University College London and the eighteen members include Professor Karl Friston FRS (see 14 July).
• Wednesday 20th July The day after temperatures of 41^oC are recorded at UK London Heathrow Airport, these are the temperature readings in Ledbury.
  
• 21st July US President Joe Biden tests positive for COVID. The Daily Mail Online reports that he is isolating at the White House and has started a course of Pfizer Paxlovid antiviral. This new drug was approved by the FDA last December to be prescribed by physicians but was only made available from pharmacists two weeks ago. Studies have showed it decreased both deaths and hospitalizations in unvaccinated COVID patients by nearly 90 per cent. Despite those strong numbers the drug was found to be less effective in treating vaccinated patients - which Biden is three times over - and doctor’s have reported symptoms returning in some patients after Paxlovid treatment.
  
• 22nd July Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine and the Co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development is interviewed by Chiara Giordano. He is asked about a new sub-variant, B.A.2.75, called Centaur.
  
• 27th July Metro online newspaper reports President Joe Biden has tested negative for the coronavirus after five days of isolation. Speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House on Wednesday morning, Biden says:
  Here’s the bottom line – when my predecessor got Covid, he had to get helicoptered to Walter Reed medical center. He was severely ill. Thankfully he recovered. When I got Covid, I worked from upstairs of the White House, in the offices upstairs, for the five-day period.
  Biden, who walked up to the podium wearing a mask which he then took off, said vaccinations in the past year have made a difference.
  But also three new tools, free to all and widely available. You don’t need to be president to get these tools to use for your defense. In fact, the same booster shots, the same at-home test, the same treatment that I got is available to you. My administration has made sure that all Americans across the country, all walks of life, have free access to those tools. Covid was killing thousands of Americans when I got here. You can live without fear by doing what I did – get boosted, get tests and get treatment.
  He posts this Tweet today:
  In an editorial on the BMJ British Medical Journal  website headed ‘Intended for healthcare professionals’ and entitled ‘Smell and taste dysfunction after covid-19’, Professor P. Boscolo-Rizzo of the Department of Medicine, Surgery and Health Sciences at the University of Trieste makes the following points based on his research:
  1. The sense of smell is an ancient and vital perception in mammals, with the olfactory receptor gene family making up 1% of the mammalian genome ... However, people only realise the importance of smell when it is lost. The covid-19 pandemic has put both smell and taste disturbances in the spotlight because of the functional impact and severe distress caused by the loss of these senses, their fundamental diagnostic value, and, more recently, the high rate of long term dysfunction. About 5% of people report smell and taste dysfunction six months after covid-19, and, given that an estimated 550 million cases of covid-19 have been reported worldwide as of July 2022, large numbers of patients will be seeking care for these disabling morbidities.
  2. Loss of smell and taste adversely affects quality of life by depriving those affected of several everyday pleasures and social bonds. People can also experience anorexia, food aversions, malnutrition, anxiety, and depression. Parosmia, a distorted smell perception is a common symptom ... arising on average three months after SARS-CoV-2 infection. For the overwhelming majority, parosmia transforms a pleasant odour into an unpleasant one, and daily activities such as smelling coffee and sensing the flavour of food can become disgusting and emotionally distressing.
  3. In a recent case-control study of patients one year after covid-19, we observed that participants who self-reported complete resolution of their loss of smell had statistically significant lower psychophysical olfactory scores than people with no history of covid-19 matched on sex and age. Although an unconscious alteration of sense of smell may not impact quality of life, it exposes people to possible risks. In addition to eating behaviour, nutrition, and social communication, both smell and taste are crucial for vital functions such as warning against environmental hazards, including fires, poisonous fumes, leaking gas, and spoiled food.
  4. Olfactory training, started as soon as possible after the onset of symptoms, is the only disease specific intervention with evidence of efficacy for the treatment of post-infectious olfactory dysfunction. First proposed by Thomas Hummel in 2009, olfactory training exploits the unique regenerative capabilities of the olfactory neuroepithelium. Patients are advised to sniff and try to identify a sequence of four strong smelling scents — usually rose, eucalyptus, lemon, and clove — for 15 seconds twice a day over the course of several months.
• 28th July The Guardian newspaper reports that the rapid spread of Covid-19 infections in the past month has sent the number of workers taking sick leave soaring, according to official figures, making staff shortages even worse and forcing many employers to shut down parts of their business. Undermining hopes that the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants spreading across the UK would mimic the relatively mild Omicron variant of the virus, employers have reported staff being “knocked out” and too ill to work from home. Figures from the ONS show that 1.1%, or more than 300,000 workers, took time off sick due to Covid in June.
• Saturday 30th July yahoo!sport website publishes this ONS data graph for estimated COVID infections in the UK population showing the number falling to 3.2 million in the week to 20 July down from 3.8 million the previous week.
  The ONS reports that the latest estimated numbers and proportions of the community population (those not in hospitals, care homes or other institutional settings) that had COVID-19 in the week to 20 July are:
      2,600,000 (1 in 20) in England
      272,000 (1 in 19) in Scotland
      156,200 (1 in 19) in Wales
      113,400 (1 in 16) in Northern Ireland
  All well above the levels reported on 2 June.
  US President Joe Biden tweets this afternoon;
  The viral treatment Paxlovid as reported in the diary on 21 June is a twice-a-day dose of anti-viral tablets and the course of treatment lasts five days. The dose is two pink nirmatrelvir tablets and one white ritonavir tablet.
  Fox News online says that White House Doctor Dr. Kevin O’Connor confirms that the President tested negative for COVID-19 on Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning, Thursday morning, and Friday morning, but tested positive on Saturday morning. Biden has not experienced a reemergence of symptoms, and there’s no need to restart treatment. Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News medical analyst and professor of medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center says that Paxlovid rebound for Biden is not a surprise. I was surprised when he ended quarantine after 5 days even with two negative tests because he still clearly had mild symptoms including nasal congestion. What I think happens is that the Paxlovid stops the virus from reproducing but when it wears off there may still be some particles left and they then start to reproduce again and the test turns positive. I think the FDA should consider extending the course to 7-8 days in higher risk cases like the president.
• 5th August SciDev.Net reports from Lagos, Nigeria that, while Africa is still lagging behind the rest of the world on COVID-19 vaccine access and uptake, the WHO says immunisation rates are improving. The World Health Assembly in May last year set a COVID-19 vaccine goal for countries to vaccinate at least ten per cent of their populations by 30 September, 2021. Only 15 African countries met this target however, by July this year there had been some improvement with COVID-19 vaccination coverage. Rates increased from less than four per cent in both Ethiopia and Zambia to 33 per cent and 25.2 per cent respectively. In Tanzania vaccination coverage for a completed primary series rose from 1.8 to 15.8 per cent while South Sudan rose from two per cent to 11 per cent. A study published in the 1 August issue of The Lancet Global Health estimates that from January 2020 to December 2021, less than two per cent of COVID-19 infections in Africa were reported. According to the study, by the end of this year there could be 166.2 million cases and about 22,600 deaths in the region.
• Sunday 6th August President Biden is signed off by his doctors to come out of isolation as he recovers from COVID following a second negative test today.
• 12th August An NHS open letter is published today from Maggie Throup, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Vaccines and Public Health to Professor Dame Jenny Harries, the Chief Executive of the UK Health Security Agency.
  In it Maggie Throup says that the UKHSA has brought together staff and capabilities of NHS Test and Trace, the health protection elements of Public Health England, the Joint Biosecurity Centre and, since April 2022, the Managed Quarantine Service. From September 2022 it will also take over the responsibilities of the Vaccine Taskforce (VTF). For other readers she explains that the UKHSA is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) with operational autonomy, working in partnership with NHS England (NHSE). She gives the UKHSA three prioritires for 2022-2023 –
  1. Reduce harm from infectious disease and other health security hazards, and achieve more equitable outcomes.
  2. Prepare for future health security hazards so that our health, society, public services and economy are less impacted.
  3. Strengthen health security capability to improve the effectiveness of our local, national and global response.
  [Ed. No pressure then.]
• 16th August itv news online reports that over-50s and clinically vulnerable people will be offered the first Covid jab to target two strains of the virus, as part of the UK’s autumn booster programme. Health Secretary Steve Barclay has said that Moderna’s new ‘bivalent’ vaccine, which targets both the original Covid strain and the Omicron variant, will be part of the rollout from early September. People over the age of five who are classed as most at risk from the virus will be eligible, as will their household contacts, NHS frontline and care home staff and carers aged 16 or over. The UK became the first nation to authorise the vaccine, described as “next generation” by experts, when the MHRA Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency  approved it on Monday [yesterday]. The UK is the first nation to approve the Moderna mRNA-1273.214 vaccine. Moderna’s chief medical officer, Dr Paul Burton, previously said the new jab can boost a person’s antibodies to such high levels that it may only be needed annually.
• 19th August Dr Lizzie Toberty, GP lead at grassroots lobbying organisation Doctors’ Association UK, tells the i newspaper: “Practices have looked at available funding to provide the latest Covid vaccine and it simply isn’t viable. The money for previous rollouts, which has now been reduced or removed, comes on the back of increases in staff costs with the recent pay uplift [part funded from existing NHS budgets], and also increased energy costs.
  Nobody’s asking to make money on this but we can’t deliver a vaccine programme at a loss. That can’t come out of individual GP partners’ pockets, so the funding needs to be urgently reviewed or an alternative programme or provider sought. But that would mean patients making two trips to have a Covid and flu vaccine which can be delivered at once.
  And I find it really concerning that in the middle of August we don’t know how we are going to run a vaccine programme that is supposed to be rolled out in September. There needs to be more understanding from the Government and NHS England as to what the likely costs GP practices will incur and then to work with practices to deliver the programme.”
• 19th August yahoo news website publishes this ONS data graph for estimated COVID infections in the UK population showing the number falling to 1.7 million in the week to 8 August down from 2.6 million the previous week.
  
• 22nd August Paul Gallagher in the i online reports that in the UK, by May of this year, nearly 40,000 people had reported a change to their menstrual cycle to the Yellow Card surveillance scheme, the medical regulator scheme, to which healthcare professionals and members of the public can report suspected vaccine side effects. And now, several studies have been published which back up these observations. An American survey published in the Science Advances journal earlier in August involving 39,000 participants aged 18-80, is the largest study so far. It found that 43 per cent of those with regular cycles noticed heavier bleeding after a vaccination and increased cramps were also recorded. The study results align with others, finding that post-vaccination changes to periods are small and quickly reverse. Amy (28) told the newspaper “If more jabs are coming, it would just be nice if we’d be given a bit more of a heads-up about potential impact instead of worrying [that] something has gone wrong.”
  The i newspaper says that the default contract for GPs General Practitioners  [Ed. doctors working in community surgeries] delivering vaccines this autumn has been cut from £12.58 per dose to £10.06, while a £10 supplement for them to give jabs in care homes and to other vulnerable groups has also been cut. The BMA says GP practices have given around 75% of COVID vaccinations and many struggled to break even. “Now we’re being asked to do it all over again despite real-term funding cuts.”
  The BMA British Medical Association , which is also a lobbying organisation, today publishes a note on doctors suffering from long COVID. In hospitals, staff absent with COVID-19 received full pay. In England, the COVID special leave provisions are due to end by 1 September 2022 and NHS staff will revert to normal contractual sick pay arrangements. In general practice, primary care doctors never had a clearly defined funding and management process for doctors suffering with long-COVID and Sick pay provisions are dependent on individual partnership agreements. Locum doctors [Ed. a doctor who temporarily fills a role within a hospital, practice, or clinic] are not even entitled to Statutory Sick Pay unless agreed with the provider.
• Sunday 28th August Update to 18 May 2021 entry.
  The WHO website gives these figures for the number of deaths in each of the worst affected countries today. The second column is the current country population estimates from statisticstimes.com and the number in brackets is the number of deaths per 100,000 people.

  USA	1,031,832		335,109,030		[ 307 ]
  Brazil	683,076		215,576,875		[ 317 ]
  Russia	383,910		145,793,933		[ 263 ]
  India	527,556		1,408,713,627		[   37 ]
  Mexico	329,225		131,768,265		[ 249 ]
  Peru	215,486		33,733,535		[ 639 ]
  UK	187,761		68,546,206		[ 274 ]
  Italy	175,127		60,248,820		[ 290 ]
  Indonesia	157,478		279,556,985		[   56 ]
  France	150,311		65,607,721		[ 229 ]
  Germany	147,003		83,881.070		[ 175 ]
  Iran	143,550		86,178,955		[ 166 ]
  Colombia	141,406		51,550,345		[ 274 ]
  Poland	117,007		37,731,451		[ 310 ]
  Spain	112,246		46,712,784		[ 240 ]
  Ukraine	108,803		43,150,217		[ 252 ]
  South Africa	102,066		60,868,075		[ 168 ]

  
  Worldwide the figure is over 6,459,000 deaths.
  In a world population of 7,794 million people, 1,407 million vaccine doses have been administered. (All figures subject to the accuracy of information supplied by the various countries).
  [Ed. Researching why Peru is suffering so badly I assembled the following facts]
  Peru first saw the pandemic on 6 March 2020 when a 25-year-old Peruvian from Lima returned from travelling in Europe. The country put a strict lockdown in place for four months with borders closed, school closed, curfews and going out apart from to buy food and essentials was banned. As time passed it became clear there was a countrywide shortage of oxygen and only around 1600 intensive care beds. Only about 38% of Peruvian adults have a bank account so distributing relief monies quickly was dificult. Also more than 40% of households don’t have a refridgerator so people need to make daily visits to the markets. Also there are a lot of multi-occupancy properties with overcrowding allowing the virus to spread.
  On a positive note, to date, 85% of the target population have had two vaccine doses, 71% have has three jabs and 15% have received a further fourth booster dose. On 31st July Minsa’s Immunizations Director, Maria Elena Martinez, announced that adults aged 60 years and older can now receive the fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine just 4 months after getting the third shot, to provide improved protection for this vulnerable group.
  Sources: BBC News, Andina, Peruvian Ministry of Health (MINSA).
  In the Pakistan Observer: As part of the United States (US) commitment to provide 77 million doses of U.S. COVID-19 vaccines to Pakistan, an additional nine million dollar pediatric and adult doses began arriving on August 26. ... It is pertinent to mention that the United States is the single largest donor of COVID-19 vaccines to Pakistan. In addition to those Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the United States also recently donated four mobile testing laboratories, worth $4.6 million, to Pakistan’s National Institute of Health through USAID. These labs have strengthened Pakistan’s ability to diagnose COVID-19 and other communicable diseases, especially in remote and underserved areas.
• 30th August The UK’s four chief medical officers have agreed the COVID-19 alert level should move from level 3 to level 2 as infection levels have dropped through the summer.
  The New Daily newspaper, Melbourne, Australia says a report is out today from CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research organisation  giving 20 reecommendations to better equip the country to deal with further pandemics. This is an executive summary of the report.
• 31st August The Evening Standard reports that the UK COVID-19 PUBLIC INQUIRY, chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett, a former judge, has opened it’s investigation into the UK Government’s handling of the pandemic. Module 1 will focus on events up to March 2020; Module 2 will look at decisions taken up to February 2022 in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
• 1st September BBC News reports that Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, has become the latest Chinese city to be locked down as Beijing continues to pursue its controversial “zero-Covid” policy. Around 21 million people have been ordered to stay indoors, with just one person per household allowed out for essential shopping if they can show evidence of a negative Covid test. On Thursday, the city recorded 157 new infections, including 51 asymptomatic. However Beijing’s policy has been accused of stifling economic growth, and has prompted rare public dissent from citizens.
  Chengdu’s residents, asked to stay at home from 18:00 local time (10:00 GMT) on Thursday, will all be tested over the coming days, but it was not clear when restrictions would be lifted. People have also been banned from entering or leaving the city.
  Today the autumn booster COVID vacination programme starts in Wales. England and Scotland begin on the 5th and Northern Ireland on the 13th. First priority is people and staff in care homes and the Moderna vaccine will be used generally.
• 6th September Boris Johnson steps down as UK Prime Minister today after Conservative MPs and Conservative party members in the UK chose Liz Truss to replace him. In his last speech in Downing Street he claims full credit for rolling out the vaccine programme with no mention of Dame Kate Bingham, who successfully led the vaccine task force, or the NHS workers and hundreds of volunteers who made it work. [ see 16 May 2020 ]
  
  On 14th December 2021 BBC News had some information on why multiple vaccinations are more effective. Professor Charles Bingham of Imperial College, London: “Each vaccination increases the concentration of antibodies in the blood and the more times you are vaccinated the longer lasting the imnmune memory is.” Antibodies evolve to attach themselves more firmly to the virus in a process called ‘affinity maturation’.
• 8th September After concern was expressed by doctors over Her Majesty’s health, it was announced today that Queen Elizabeth passed away this afternoon at Balmoral. A statement, posted on the gates of Buckingham Palace says:
  “The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon.
  The King and the Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow.”
  The BBC shows this portrait on the Six o’clock television News.
  This little film was made by the Queen for her Platinum Jubilee. Paddington Bear is invited for tea at the Palace.
  
  
• 12th September The latest world figures from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Right click to view the dashboard full-size or
  
  My wife and I have booked our COVID-19 autumn booster jabs with the Ledbury Health Partnership for 14th October. We will be given the annual flu jab at the same time.
• Sunday 18th September The Queen’s coffin has been moved from Buckingham Palace to lie in state in Westminster Hall.
  
  Changing the Guard every 20 minutes. Since Tuesday, people have been queueing in order to be able to walk past the coffin and pay their respects. Westminster Hall opened to the public at 5:00pm on Thursday evening. The queue to visit the Hall was well-organised. People were given numbered armbands to allow them to leave for food or toilet and return to their place, 500 temporary toilets were installed along the route, 1,000 staff and volunteers were on hand to assist, 8 first-aid stations were manned and facilities were open at venues like the National Theatre for rest and refreshments. Some people queued overnight for up to ten hours and one night the temperature dropped to 10^oC. The queue closes at 10:43pm tonight with the last people expected to have to wait eight hours to walk past the coffin. Westminster Hall will be closed at 6:30am to prepare for the state funeral tomorrow (which has been declared a bank holiday to allow people to attend the ceremony).
  US President Joe Biden, his wife Jill and the US ambassador to the UK, Jane Hartley (on left), appear on a balcony at the Hall to pay their respects.
• 20th September The UK Government has estimated that over 250,000 people viewed the coffin in Westminster Hall.
• 21st September
• 23rd September The Worcester News today gives this graph showing number of infections in England and Wales rising again.
• 7th October The Sun newspaper online reports that the ONS current estimate for individual Brits infected has risen this week from 1.1 million to 1.3 million. Also COVID hospitalisations are increasing and several hospitals have brought back the requirement for face masks to be worn by visitors. Right click to view the map full-size or
  
• 8th October The Plymouth Herald today publishes this graph illustrating the number of infections in England and Wales given by the Sun yesterday.
• Thursday 13th October Toni McDonald on BBC Hereford & Worcester local radio interviews Dr. Thomas Waite, Deputy CMO for England this morning. He replaced Professor Jonathan Van-Tam in April. The CMO is an independent position at permanent secretary level, supported by three DCMOs. The role provides public health and clinical advice to ministers in the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and across government.
  
• 14th October On BBC News it was mentioned that the UK has fallen behind European countries in terms of the number of doctors per head of the population. The WHO Global Health Observatory publishes figures from 2019/20 which confirm this.
  
  
  COUNTRY

   

  Sweden

  Greece

  Belgium

  Portugal

  Norway

  Spain

  Germany

  Switzerland

  Netherlands

  Italy

  France

  United Kingdom

  PHYSICIANS per
  100,000 population

     709

     630

     607

     548

     504

     444

     443

     438

     407

     394

     327

     300

  
  My wife and I postpone our COVID-19 /influenza jabs, booked for today, as we both have a viral chest infection, tested not to be COVID-19. We are going to try to have the jabs on separate days as reports from friends indicate a bad 24-hour reaction when the two jabs are given at the same time.
• 15th October On BBC Breakfast on BBC1 this morning Dr. Chris Smith has news on Long Covid (long-lasting after-effects from COVID-19 infections).
  
  
• 19th October The Glasgow Times publishes this graph. The Press Association graph shows the latest infections estimate.
  
• 20 October Medicalxpress.com and UN Africa Renewal magazine report Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO regional director for Africa speaking today during a virtual press briefing:
  The end of the COVID-19 pandemic is within sight, but as long as Africa lags far behind the rest of the world in reaching widespread protection, there is a dangerous gap which the virus can exploit to come roaring back. After a bumpy start, the COVAX partnership has assured a steady pipeline of COVID-19 vaccines to Africa. Now, we are a victim of our own success. As vaccines have helped bring the number of infections down, people no longer fear COVID-19 and so few are willing to get vaccinated.   The number of COVID-19 vaccine doses given in Africa has dropped by more than 50% over the last three months and only 24% of all 1.3 billion Africans have completed their primary series of COVID-19 vaccination compared to 64% worldwide. Only three African countries — Liberia, Mauritius and Seychelles — have vaccinated more than 70% of their population. Rwanda is expected to reach the benchmark soon, and four others also have hit 50%. There are still 6 countries in Africa where vaccination rates are below 10%.
• 21st October The US CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  COVID DATA TRACKER shows the progress of the pandemic in the USA since the beginning. Right click to view the graphs full-size or In the US 1.4% of all counties, districts or territories have a high COVID-19 Community level, 17.6% are medium level and 80.9% have a low Community Level. In high level areas the CDC recommends wearing a high-quality mask (e.g. N95). In medium level areas they recommend wearing a mask indoors in public places. For all levels they say stay up-to-date on vaccination, including booster doses, keep indoor spaces well-ventilated and isolate if you have suspected or confirmed COVID-19.
• 24th October Liz Truss resigned as UK Prime Minister on 20th October saying I came into office at a time of great economic and international instability. Families and businesses were worried about how to pay their bills. Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine threatens the security of our whole continent and our country has been held back for too long by low economic growth. I was elected by the Conservative Party with a mandate to change this. We delivered on energy bills and on cutting National Insurance. And we set out a vision for a low tax high growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit. I recognise, though, given the situation I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party.
  Today Rishi Sunak, former Chancellor of the Exchequer under Boris Johnson is chosen by MPs to be the new leader of the Conservative Party and hence Prime Minister. He will be the UK’s first non-white leader (and of Hindu religion) and, at 42 years-old, its youngest PM in 200 years. He is sorting out his cabinet today and of particular interest will be his choice of Health Secretary.
  Late today it’s reported that Steve Barclay has been appointed Health Secretary [following his earlier period in the post under Boris Johnson from 5 July].
• 25th October My wife and I had our flu vaccinations today at a walk-in clinic at our local Ledbury pharmacy. There are no side effects to report.
• 26th October The Independent online newspaper reports that the UKHSA UK Health Security Agency  has urged everyone eligible to get a flu vaccine, saying Covid-19 restrictions over the past two winters mean people have little natural immunity. The latest data suggests hospital and intensive admissions for the respiratory disease are rising quickest in children under five, though overall flu levels are still at a relatively low level, meaning it is difficult to predict how big the wave will be.
  
  Around 33 million people in England are eligible for a free flu vaccine this year, including all primary-age and some secondary-age children, who will be offered the nasal spray. Those eligible for the flu jab are: people aged 50 and over; those aged six months to 49 with a specified health condition; secondary school-aged children focusing on Years 7, 8 and 9 with any remaining vaccine offered to Years 10 and 11; primary school-aged children; pregnant women; those in care homes, frontline health and social care staff; carers and the household contacts of people with weakened immune systems. GPs are also inviting children aged two and three years old (as of August 31) for the FluMist LAIV Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccine  children’s nasal spray. The latest data suggests that 12-13% of two and three year olds have so far taken up the offer.
  [Note: All influenza (flu) vaccines for the 2022-2023 season in the UK are quadrivalent, meaning they are designed to protect against four flu viruses: an influenza A (H1N1) virus, an influenza A (H3N2) virus and two influenza B viruses.]
  
  Switzerland DetailZero reports on a new development in viral research. Dr Joanne Haney from the MRC Virus Research Center and the University of Glasgow led the study into co-infections (when a person is infected with two viruses at the same time) which shows that an influenza virus and a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) can fuse to form a palm-shaped hybrid, which could infect new cells even in the presence of influenza antibodies. RSV is one of the common viruses that cause coughs and colds in winter.
  Each year approximately 5 million people worldwide are hospitalized with the influenza A virus. RSV, on the other hand, causes severe respiratory infections in children under five, but can also infect some older children or even adults. Although co-infections are considered relatively common, it was not known how these viruses would react if they ended up in the same cell. The researchers believe these findings could help explain why co-infections can lead to significant worsening of the disease in some patients, including difficult-to-treat viral pneumonia. The results are published in the journal Nature Microbiology.
• 26th October Dr. Peter Hotez [see July] on Reuters Video gives an update on the latest position with the three viruses, COVID-19, influenza and RSV.
• 29th October The Moderna mRNA (Spikevax) bivalent vaccine, which is expected to be used in the UK autumn booster programme, is designed to give immunity to the original COVID strain and Omicron BA.4 / BA.5 variants. It can be stored at freezer tempoeratures (-50 to -15^oC) until the expiration date, at refrigerator temperatures (2 to 8^oC) for up to 30 days and in a cool room below 25^oC for up to 24 hours.
  Autumn booster vaccinations were given to 11,549,952 people in England (from 5th September to 27th October 2022), Public Health Scotland reports 1,041,400 and in Wales the BBC reports 585,000 boosters. Figures for Northern Ireland do not seem to be available perhaps due to the lack of a governing Assembly at Stormont.
• 31st October Using the ONS population estimates for mid-2020, the death rate from COVID-19 in the nations of the UK as given on the Government COVID-19 website are:

  	Population	Total Deaths    to date	Deaths per 100,000 people
  England	56,550,138	173,769	307
  Scotland	5,466,000	15,802	289
  Wales	3,169,586	10,817	341
  N.Ireland	1,895,510	4,891	258
  UK	67,081,234	205,279	306

  This is an update from 30 June.
  
  Also the latest WHO survey on vaccinations in Africa. Right click to enlarge or
• 1st November Shannon Hall in Scientific American reports today that, at the end of the week ending October 29, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that two Omicron variants — BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 — account for nearly 17 percent of viral samples genetically sequenced in the country. That was a huge increase over a month earlier when the variants were practically invisible in the data and suggests they will soon outcompete BA.5 and BA.4.6, the dominant strains in the United States. Meanwhile, a variant called XBB has been causing a substantial infection wave in Southeast Asia. These new variants threaten to disarm monoclonal antibody treatments, such as Evusheld, [AZ] which have played an important role in protecting immunocompromised people and others at high risk of serious disease. But they work by targeting a specific shape on the virus and that shape has simply mutated. Luckily, Paxlovid [Pfizer] — which has proved effective at preventing serious cases of the disease, particularly in older populations — does not target a specific shape on the virus, and should continue to work well.
• 2nd November Statista has this racing bar graph showing how vaccination has progressed in each continent.
• 3rd November
• 4th November The Shropshire Star publishes this graph today showing the number of infections in UK falling slightly.
• 6th November I overlooked a key appointment to the UK Vaccines Task Force last year. In June this year Divya Chadha Manek, 35, was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Her work is praised in Dame Kate Bingham’s book “The Long Shot: The Inside Story of the Race to Vaccinate Britain” which was published in October. Briefly Divya Manek worked for the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and Kate Bingham selected her to be seconded to the UK Vaccine Task Force as Clinical Trials Workstream Leader. Divya Manek was responsible for supporting global pharmaceutical companies’ efforts to get marketing authorisation of COVID-19 vaccines by clinical trials in the UK and she developed the important NHS Vaccine Research Registry. [Source: eyebiotech.com]
  A clip from a podcast on BioTalk with Rich Bendis.
• 9th November My wife and I had our autumn booster COVID-19 jabs this afternoon. We were given the original ‘wild-type’ Pfizer/BioNTech Comirnaty vaccine although the Pfizer bivalent vaccine (against original strain and Omicron BA.1 variant) was approved for use in UK on 3 September. A second Pfizer bivalent vaccine was approved by the MHRA Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency  today. This targets the original strain and the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants. It’s not clear where and when these combination vaccines will be used in the current programme.
  
  Background: On 3 September the JVLI said that these vaccines would be used:
  Advised for use in adults aged 18 years and above:

  ⬤ Moderna mRNA (Spikevax) bivalent Original ‘wild-type’/Omicron BA.1. Dose: 50 micrograms

  ⬤ Moderna mRNA (Spikevax) Original ‘wild-type’ vaccine. Dose: 50 micrograms

  ⬤ Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA (Comirnaty) bivalent Original ‘wild-type’/Omicron BA.1 vaccine. Dose: 30 micrograms

  ⬤ Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA (Comirnaty) ‘wild-type’ vaccine. Dose: 30 micrograms

  Advised for use in persons aged 12 to 17 years:

  ⬤ Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA (Comirnaty) bivalent Original ‘wild-type’/Omicron BA.1 vaccine. Dose: 30 micrograms

  ⬤ Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA (Comirnaty) ‘wild-type’ vaccine. Dose: 30 micrograms

  Advised for use in persons aged 5 to 11 years:

  ⬤ Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA (Comirnaty) ‘wild-type’ vaccine paediatric formulation. Dose 10 micrograms. Available for ‘off-label’ use as a booster dose (currently UK approved for primary course vaccination in children aged 5 to 11 years)

  
  At the end of September Gov.uk said:
  “You will be given a booster dose of a vaccine made by Pfizer or Moderna. You may be offered an updated combination version of these booster vaccines – the combination vaccines include a half-dose of the previous vaccine combined with a half-dose of a vaccine against the Omicron variant. For a very small number of people another vaccine product may be advised by your doctor. Both the previous and the combination vaccines boost protection very well, although the combination vaccines produce slightly higher levels of antibody against some strains of Omicron. As we cannot predict which variants of COVID-19 will be circulating this winter, JVCI Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation  have concluded that both types of vaccine can be used in adults, and that no one should delay vaccination to receive combination vaccines.”
  
  Professor Sheena Cruickshank of the University of Manchester, writing in BristolLive, gives a clear explanantion of new research aimed more precisely at coronavirus.
  “Mucosal vaccines are delivered in your nose or throat, as sniffable or inhalable formulations. They may sound new but actually we’ve been using them for years to vaccinate against diseases such as flu. While conventional needle-in-your-arm vaccines induce a more systemic immune response, mucosal vaccines do something different. Viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 enter our systems via our nose and mouth when we breathe in small virus-containing droplets. This means immunity in our nose, mouth and throat really matters to stop infections. Mucosal vaccines are designed to target this “mucosal immune system ”. The mucosal immune system has the potential to stop the virus in its tracks when it enters the body, so scientists predict that mucosal vaccines could prevent infection. Mucosal immunity may also be better at getting our immune system to remember SARS-CoV-2. Memory cells are specialised long-lived immune cells that remember the virus and carry instructions for our immune cells to be quickly deployed if it attacks again. Systemic vaccines are not so good at activating the memory cells in our nose and throat, but mucosal vaccines are. ... Several mucosal vaccine candidates are being explored in pre-clinical and clinical trials.”
• 10th November This is a 2020 Express newspaper online chart amended to show Omicron variant symptoms according to the Zoe study. Right click to view the table full-size or
  
  Gov.uk dashboard gives confirmed daily numbers of people in hospital with COVID-19 from August to October. And this is the graph for the pandemic so far.
• 22nd November The i newspaper reports that a new app. called Visible is launching today to monitor long COVID (and other post-viral conditions such as ME/CFS myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome ). Users place a finger on the device’s camera and measure their heartbeat, in particular the tiny fluctuations between each beat, and this holds clues to a person’s energy levels which can vary considerably from day to day. Ms. Rachel Moore has had debilitating long COVID symptoms since February 2020. She has discovered that physical and emotional exertion can cause symptoms sometimes a day or two later. If i do too much activity, I’ll have a crash. [Unlike other smart devices] Visible is geared towards illness and not fitness.
  
  The US firm, Visible Health Inc., has $1 million of funding from healthcare venture capital firms and anonymous data collected will be passed to Imperial College, London for research. So far 5,000 people have signed up for the app. and the team hopes to launch a wearable version, in the form of an armband, next year.
• 25th November The Press Association graph shows the latest infections estimate.
• 26th November On Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4 this morning Tim Spector explains his contribution to dealing with COVID-19.
  
• 30th November The BBC COVID-19 dashboard gives these figures for UK vaccinations.
• 1st December On 23rd February last the British Medical Journal reported Government plans to sell off the newly-built Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre [see 16 May 2020]. The Government said that industry had effectively taken over vaccine production and the need for the VMIC’s surge capacity had passed. Despite opposition from MPs and figures such as Dame Kate Bingham who say the loss of the facility will adversely affect the UK capability for dealing with future pandemics including further COVID-19 variants emmerging,the sale went ahead in April.
  
  Today the i newspaper reports that the US company, Catalent, that bought the facility say that they will not be spending any money on the VMIC [to complete fitting out of the labs etc.] until 2024. In another case, the firm Cobra Biologics, based at Science Park, University of Keele, has been sold to an American pharmaceutical firm, Charles River, who are moving manuacturing to the US. The Charles River website explains what has happened.

  Cobra Biologics Is Now Part of Charles River In April 2021, Charles River acquired Cognate BioServices, which included Cobra Biologics, a leading international contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) specializing in premium plasmid DNA and viral vector services to support the Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMP) industry.

• 2nd December The Scottish Construction Now news service reports that the UK technology innovation organisation CPI Centre for Process Innovation Limited  has opened its Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre at the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District Scotland (AMIDS) in Renfrewshire, Scotland, bringing 100 high-quality jobs and an initial estimated £200 million of technology investment into Glasgow City Region. The Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre has six founding partners: pharmaceutical giants, AstraZeneca and GSK; technology innovation catalyst, CPI; strategic research partner, the University of Strathclyde; and two government agencies, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Scottish Enterprise. Other partners that have invested in the centre include Pfizer, Novartis and Alnylam from the pharma industry, business partner PwC, and technology leaders Siemens and Applied Materials.
  
  UK government minister for Scotland John Lamont said: This centre of excellence is a truly remarkable development that will push science to its limits and beyond to find medical breakthroughs with the potential to save and transform countless lives.
  
  Scottish Government business minister, Ivan McKee, said: The UK Government, through Innovate UK, is investing a combined £28m in the Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre. This is in addition to a further £55.6m in the wider Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District through the City Deal and Levelling Up funds.
• 8th December The UK Government Coronavirus dashboard records deaths where COVID-19 is noted on the death certificate in the UK and the nations up to today as follows.

  UK	210,837
  England	177,477
  Scotland	16,146
  Wales	11,054
  Northern Ireland	4,996

  The nation figures do not add up to the UK total but no explanation is given. The associated Graphs and Data Tables are incomplete, ending mid-2022.
• 11th December
  In the i newspaper the science correspondent Tom Bawden reports Flu cases fell much more sharply during the pandemic than colds because flu is much less contagious, meaning Covid restrictions had a greater effect on numbers. And the resulting loss of immunity from flu among the population is largely responsible for the current rebound.
• Monday 19th December The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) reports that in December the Chinese government announced a series of measures that essentially lifted the country’’s zero-covid policy. A tiered medical system has been put in place to try to deal with surging case numbers. However, low vaccination rates among the elderly and the lack of healthcare facilities in rural areas mean that China’s outlook will be bleak in early 2023. From an economic standpoint, shocks to global supply chains and consumption appear inevitable.
  
  The Economist magazine itself quotes new modelling data which suggests 1.5 million Chinese could die in the worst case scenario if the virus is allowed to spread freely, with about 96% of people catching it within the next three months.
• 23rd December The Ipswich Star publishes this graph today showing the number of infections in UK rising.
  
• 25th December A follow-up on the 19th Deccmber entry. BEIJING, Dec 25 (Reuters) - China’s Zhejiang, a big industrial province near Shanghai, is battling around a million new daily COVID-19 infections, a number expected to double in the days ahead, the provincial government said on Sunday. Nationwide figures from China had become incomplete as the National Health Commission stopped reporting asymptomatic infections, making it harder to track cases. On Sunday the commission stopped reporting daily figures, which the China CDC then published.
  
  Zhejiang is among the few areas to estimate their recent spikes in infections including asymptomatic cases. “The infection peak is estimated to arrive earlier in Zhejiang and to enter a period of elevated level around New Year’s Day, during which the daily new infection number will be up to two million,” the Zhejiang government said in a statement.
  
  Zhejiang, with a population of 65.4 million, said that among the 13,583 infections being treated in the province’s hospitals, one patient had severe symptoms caused by COVID, while 242 infections of severe and critical conditions were caused by underlying diseases.
  
  China’s healthcare system has been under enormous strain, with staff being asked to work while sick and even retired medical workers in rural communities being rehired to help grass-root efforts, according to state media. Bolstering the urgency is the approach of the Lunar New Year in January, when huge numbers of people return home.
• 26th December The i newspaper reports that he UKHSA Epidemiology Modelling Review Group (EMRG) will stop publishing of modelling data on Covid-19 in the new year after more than two years of updates. Dr Nick Watkins, chief data scientist at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), says “During the pandemic, the R value and growth rate served as a useful and simple indicator to inform public health action and government decisions. Now that vaccines and therapeutics have allowed us to move to a phase where we are living with Covid-19, with surveillance scaled down but still closely monitored through a number of different indicators, the publication of this specific data is no longer necessary.” The weekly figures were first published by the government agency in May 2020 for all of the UK, until April 2021 when it was published for England only. This slowed to fortnightly updates from April 2022.
• 29 December The latest world figures from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Right click to view the dashboard full-size or
  Johns Hopkins says the first case of COVID-19 in China was reported 1093 days ago on 31/12/2019. Since then, the country has reported 4,455,175 cases, and 16,876 deaths. This dashboard may not be much use in 2023 if a major country like China stops publishing figures for cases and deaths.

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Barry Sharples, 2022


Further information:

UK PROGRESS CHART (JPG)

January to May 22

(Cases records ending at Easter)

HEREFORDSHIRE PROGRESS CHART (JPG)

January to June 22

(Cases records ending at Easter)

LEDBURY PROGRESS CHART (JPG)

March 2020 to June 2022

(Cases records ending at Easter)

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