‘The name NHS Test and Trace sounds like it is one whole service that is part of the NHS. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is a complex web of different programmes, led by the civil service, that have been bolted together rapidly. Private firms play a key role in terms of both testing and tracing, which has meant some of the local expertise available in the NHS, universities and councils has been bypassed.’
Read here (BBC, Nov 20, 2020)
‘A study of the lungs of people who have died from COVID-19 has found persistent and extensive lung damage in most cases and may help doctors understand what is behind a syndrome known as ‘long COVID’, in which patients suffer ongoing symptoms for months. “The findings indicate that COVID-19 is not simply a disease caused by the death of virus-infected cells, but is likely the consequence of these abnormal cells persisting for long periods inside the lungs,” said Mauro Giacca, a professor at King’s College London who co-led the work. In a telephone interview, Giacca said that, while his research team found no overt signs of viral infection or prolonged inflammation in other organs, they discovered “really vast destruction of the architecture of the lungs”, with healthy tissue “almost completely substituted by scar tissue”.
Read here (Reuters, Nov 4, 2020)
‘When the remote town of St Just, Cornwall, was locked down in March, the small community worried that its economy wouldn't survive. But one town councillor, Daisy Gibbs, rallied an army of volunteers to form 'the Daisy chain', an informal support network to ensure every household in the district had support. Inspired by her imagination and resilience, filmmaker Sky Neal followed the Daisy Chain for seven months, as local businesses adapted and the community pulled together to realise a more sustainable future. However, as a second wave of restrictions threatens, the town has to dig deep to find the resilience they need to ensure their future. Can they re-invent their local economy to survive and thrive beyond Covid?’
View here (The Guardian, Nov 2, 2020)
‘Populist parties, which have already used this growing disillusionment [with national and global institutions] to increase their influence and to take power in many countries, are likely to grow stronger. A critical consequence will be that the isolationism seen in the past decade or so will increase with slogans such as “America First”, “Make Britain Great Again” and “Prima gli Italiani” gaining traction.
‘These factors are all pointing to a very different world from what we have been seeing. The traditional powers of the west are neither as strong economically, nor as confident of their social and organizational superiority. China, along with developing countries in Asia and Africa that have better weathered COVID storm, will likely increase their global footprint at a much faster rate that they have been doing in the past decades.’
Read here (IPS News, Oct 5, 2020)
“Long Covid” was first used by Elisa Perego as a Twitter hashtag in May to describe her own experience of a multiphasic, cyclical condition that differed in time course and symptomatology from the bi-phasic pathway discussed in early scientific papers, which focused on hospitalized patients. Just three months later, following intense advocacy by patients across the world, this patient made term has been taken up by powerful actors, including the World Health Organization. Politicians have used it too: Matt Hancock, UK health secretary, recently explained to a parliamentary committee that “the impact of long covid can be really debilitating for a long period of time.”...
‘As patients and professionals, we see “Long Covid” as better able to navigate the socio-political, as well as clinical and public health challenges, posed by the pandemic in the coming months, for a number of reasons: (1) Long Covid acknowledges that cause and disease course are as yet unknown (2) Long Covid makes clear that “mild” covid-19 is not necessarily mild (3) Long Covid avoids “chronic,” “post” and “syndrome” (4)Long Covid draws attention to morbidity (5) Long Covid centres disabled people.
Read here (BMJ Opinion, Oct 1, 2020)
‘Countries should not ease coronavirus lockdown restrictions until they meet five criteria -- and many nations are not even close, according to a new analysis published in The Lancet medical journal. The research, published Thursday, said that the prerequisites for easing Covid-19 measures are: knowledge of infection status, community engagement, adequate public health capacity, adequate health system capacity and border controls.
‘The authors looked at nine high-income countries and territories that have started to relax restrictions -- Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Germany, Norway, Spain and the UK. They found that many governments had failed to meet the criteria necessary to avoid new waves of infection, as seen in Spain, Germany and the UK.’
Read here (CNN, Sept 25, 2020)
‘The British government is exploring the possibility of clinical trials in which volunteers are deliberately exposed to coronavirus to test the effectiveness of vaccine candidates, the UK Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) revealed Wednesday in a statement... In so-called "challenge trials," researchers give study subjects an experimental vaccine and then intentionally expose them to coronavirus to see if the vaccine works. Such trials were used in early research with smallpox, yellow fever and malaria.’
Read here (CNN, Sept 23, 2020)
‘As well as the risk Covid poses to individuals, our actions affect others including vulnerable and elderly people. Think of it as a chain of infections – if you are a part of this and it gets passed on, others may become ill and die because of your role in that chain. A wedding in Maine resulted in more than 170 people contracting the virus, and seven people dying. None of those who died attended the wedding...
‘Nine months after South Korea and Senegal started building diagnostic capacity, it is comically depressing that the UK government, one of the richest in the world, does not have a functional testing system that returns results within 24 hours. In addition, given that we know the virus spreads easily through households, those who test positive should have the offer to isolate in external facilities (such as hotels). The “14-day isolation” measures for people entering the UK are also a box-ticking exercise where given the lack of screening or monitoring, a constant stream of infections keep coming into the country. It’s like trying to empty a bucket under a tap.’
Read here (The Guardian, Sept 21, 2020)
‘The UK could see 50,000 new coronavirus cases a day by mid-October without further action, the government's chief scientific adviser has warned. Sir Patrick Vallance said that "would be expected to lead to about 200 deaths per day" a month after that. It comes as the PM prepares to chair a Cobra emergency committee meeting on Tuesday morning, then make a statement in the House of Commons.’
Read here (BBC, Sept 21, 2020)
‘More in Common — a group that tries to “counter polarization” and “build bridges across dividing lines” — has a new report out this morning called “The New Normal,” which looks at “the impacts of COVID-19 on trust, social cohesion, democracy and expectations for an uncertain future.” It looks at seven countries (U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the Netherlands) and is based on surveys of about 14,000 people.’
This story focuses on ‘how people in [the] seven countries view the motives of the news media in covering the pandemic. Only in the United States is that a profoundly partisan question.’
Read here (Nieman Lab, Sept 17, 2020)
‘The increase in bartering is nowhere better exemplified than in Fiji, which inspired Dunne’s London group. The country has a long tradition of barter, known as ‘veisa’. It’s only grown amid Covid-19, and Fijians have harnessed modern technology to connect even more people...
‘Along with goods, some people have been trading another precious commodity that they may have had more of recently – time. ‘Time banking’, which started in Japan in the 1970s, and in the US in 1992, is seeing a jump in popularity. Members of a time bank spend one hour helping another member, and can receive one hour of help in return. People offer and receive things such as piano lessons, painting services or language teaching.’
Read here (BBC, August 27, 2020)
‘Back in the first week, the manual sample handling process allowed us to process several hundred samples. With more volunteers coming in, this increased to several thousand, and when we roped in robots to help, it quickly reached tens of thousands of processed tests per day. Just like the spread of the virus we were competing against, our capacity was growing exponentially. What would normally have taken months or years to establish, now took days or weeks.’
Read here (Channel News Asia, August 22, 2020)
‘Steve Reicher, a professor of social psychology at the University of St Andrews who advises the Government as part of its Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours, tells the Telegraph: “When you look at the literature on fear and risk, it’s not pointing out there is a danger which causes people to be terrorised by fear. If you tell people what the risks are and give them a clear understanding of what the mitigation is, you don’t get dread and anxiety as people know what to do.” He wants ministers to show clarity about their strategy, warning: “In a vacuum, when people are already concerned, they’ll imagine the worst circumstances.”... ‘For example, the average Briton was found last month to estimate that the disease had wiped out as much as 7 per cent of the United Kingdom, which would equate to around 4.6 million people, rather than the actual rate in the tens of thousands.
‘Although Covid-19 sparked a more draconian response from the British Government, its effectiveness will remain open to question given the UK’s better death rate and economic performance can still be compared unfavourably with Sweden, which eschewed any lockdown whatsoever... When the winter draws near, speculation about whether strict measures like local lockdowns may be necessary to clamp down on Covid will no doubt run rife. In response, many Britons will undoubtedly be tempted to focus on keeping calm and follow what the Prime Minister hails as “good British common sense” - with a bit of Swedish sangfroid.’
[This story is behind a paywall]
Read here (The Telegraph, August 22, 2020)
‘Researchers at Imperial College London reported findings from a large seroprevalence study involving more than 100,000 participants in the UK... It estimates the overall UK seroprevalence to be 6.0%, which translates to approximately 3.36 million adult infections through June 20. For comparison, the UK has reported 313,798 cumulative cases to date, which corresponds to approximately 0.6% of the total UK adult population.’ -- John Hopkins e-newsletter.
‘The pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 infection in England disproportionately affected ethnic minority groups and health and care home workers. The higher risk of infection in these groups may explain, at least in part, their increased risk of hospitalisation and mortality from COVID-19.’ Conclusion of the study.
Download here (Imperial College Institute of Global Health Innovation, August 2020)
‘Much of the focus has been on Johnson: an apparent manifestation of all that has gone wrong in Britain, a caricature of imperial nostalgia, Trumpian populism, and a general lack of seriousness. Yet this was not simply an issue of inept political leadership, inept or otherwise: Johnson stuck closely to a strategy designed and endorsed by the government’s experts, leaders in their fields and respected internationally. Even if the prime minister did make serious mistakes, the country’s issues run far deeper. The British government as a whole made poorer decisions, based on poorer advice, founded on poorer evidence, supplied by poorer testing, with the inevitable consequence that it achieved poorer results than almost any of its peers. It failed in its preparation, its diagnosis, and its treatment...
‘As prime minister, Johnson must accept that Britain’s failures are his as well. Still, the difficult truth is that the country’s failures clearly go beyond Johnson. They were collective, multilayered, and deadly. The most difficult question about all this is also the simplest: Why?... What emerges is a picture of a country whose systemic weaknesses were exposed with appalling brutality, a country that believed it was stronger than it was, and that paid the price for failures that have built up for years.’
Read here (The Atlantic, August 12, 2020)
‘Nearly half of the UK’s small charities working with the world’s poorest people expect to close within the next 12 months due to lack of financial support, a survey has found. Despite most of them seeing a spike in demand for their services during Covid-19, 15% of the charities will be forced to shut their doors within the next six months, and 45% within a year, according to data from the Small International Development Charities Network (SIDCN).’
Read here (The Guardian, August 6, 2020)