Hospitalisations and new varients

UK

20th January

Cases, + 33,355 + 38,905 = 3,505,754

Cases, last 7 days, + 294,182 (down 21.5%)

Hospitalised, + 3,634 + 3,887 = 39,068 (3,947)

Hospitalised, last 7 days, + 28,543 (up, 0.5%)

Deaths, + 1,610 + 1,820 = 93,290

Deaths, last 7 days, + 8,532 (up 14.8%)

UK death certificate deaths, 95,829 (8th January)

Vaccinated, first dose, 4,609,740 (Jan 20th)

Second dose, 460,625

Patrick Vallance

When you go into a hospital, this is very, very bad at the moment

with enormous pressure and in some cases it looks like a war zone in terms of the things that people are having to deal with

Vaccines are not doing enough heavy lifting

Secondary school testing

Plans for the daily testing instead of isolation on pause

Public Health England (PHE) and NHS Test and Trace

The balance between the risks and benefits of a daily testing programme in schools was now unclear

Wales

Mr Drakeford

There will be no point and certainly it will be logistically very damaging to try to use all of that in the first week and then to have all our vaccinators standing around with nothing to do with for another month

US

Cases, 24,256,319

Deaths, 401,797

CAL.20C, 30 – 50% of California cases

Arizona, Connecticut, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, District of Columbia

B.1.1.7, 122 cases identified

Dr. Rochelle Walensky

Infectious diseases specialist at Harvard Medical School

Currently deployed Covid-19 vaccines should still work against the new variants

However, the more-contagious strains might reduce how effectively the vaccines perform

Dr. Walensky expects total of 500,000 COVID-19 deaths by mid-February

Tens of thousands, recovered uncharacterized syndrome

U.S. has not yet seen the ramifications of what happened from the holiday travel

Will lead to high rates of hospitalizations and deaths thereafter

I think we still have some dark weeks ahead

LA county

Air quality officials, lifting restrictions, 700 waiting

Netherlands

First nationwide curfew since the Second World War

Ban on flights from South Africa, Britain and South America

South Africa

Population, 59 million

Cases, 1,356,716

Deaths, 38,288

Excess deaths, 6th May to 5th January, 83,918

Brazil

Population, 211 million

Cases, + 61,342 = 8,580540

Deaths, + 1,148 = 211,600

Recovered, 7,618,080

Vaccinations, 11,470

Israel

Will allow pregnant women to receive coronavirus vaccines

no evidence of harm resulting from vaccination during the entire pregnancy

In pregnant women who become infected and fall ill with the coronavirus, there is a higher incidence of a severe onset of the disease, than in a similar age population

Global vaccinations

Israel, 2,802,249 (32.37%)

UAE, 2,065,367 (20.88%)

Bahrain, 143,596 (8.44%)

Seychelles, 7,000 (7.14%)

UK, 4,723,443 (6.96%)

USA, 15,707,588 (4.75%)

Denmark, 177,161 (3.06%)

Malta, 11,705 (2.65%)

Lithuania 60,447 (2.22%)

Slovenia, 43,081 (2.07%)

Global vaccine tracker

US vaccine tracker

Europe vaccine tracker

Open letter on Vitamin D

Vitamin D modulates thousands of genes and many aspects of immune function, both innate and adaptive.

Higher vitamin D blood levels are associated with lower rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Higher D levels are associated with lower risk of a severe case (hospitalization, ICU, or death).

Intervention studies (including RCTs) indicate that vitamin D can be a very effective treatment.

Many papers reveal several biological mechanisms by which vitamin D influences COVID-19.

Causal inference modelling, Hill’s criteria, the intervention studies & the biological mechanisms indicate that vitamin D’s influence on COVID-19 is very likely causal, not just correlation.