COVID-19 Coronavirus UK and World News Update and UK Briefing 22nd January 2021.
The UK added 40,261 cases today and now has reported a total of 3,583,907 positive cases of COVID-19. We completed 665,330 tests yesterday.
The counter says 5,383,103 people had been given at least one dose of a vaccine in the UK by midnight last night, with 466,796 fully vaccinated.
38,562 people were in hospital on Wednesday 20th, (78% higher than the first peak in April) with 3,960 using a ventilator yesterday, 21st January.
In the 24 hours up until 5pm yesterday, we officially reported the loss of another 1,401 people who have tested positive to COVID-19 within 28 days, making a total of 95,981 losses of life in all settings.
Rep. Of Ireland 184,279 (+2,357) cases and 2,870 (+52) losses of life.
There have now been a total of 98,409,112 reported cases worldwide. The number of people who have lost their lives worldwide to COVID-19 is 2,107,517. Already 70,706,296 people have recovered.
“One of the new things in this administration is that if you don’t know the answer, don’t guess. Just say you don’t know the answer.”
Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the USA's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (Welcome back.)
We do have some good news. Today's ONS data does suggest that for the first time in ages, the UK's overall R rate is below 1. It's assumed to be between 0.8-1.0.
Right. We also have some bad news. There's little we can do about it and I can't sugar coat it, but paradoxically it may eventually lead to less overall losses of life in the UK at least. An investigative study by UK Government advisory group NERVTAG (New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group), has found that the UK variant does seem to be more lethal than the original COVID.
It appears to be around 1.3 fold more dangerous - so if 10 people would have succumbed to plain old COVID, 13 would succumb to the UK variant.
This is possibly also the case with the South African variant, and the Brazilian variant - which share some genetic mutations with the UK variant, despite developing completely separately.
This news will cause some worldwide concern - in the countries which do have UK variant (much of Europe, USA) and the countries which don't. It is seeming increasingly likely that travel between areas WITH COVID and areas WITHOUT COVID will get more and more difficult and restrictive, but possibly so will travel between areas with and without new variants.