UK Covid death toll

[Tom Joad]

I had given some thought and decided to start with positive news from now on with delivery of the vaccine but having seen the figures for week 1 I have decided that there is still a big message of caution to put out there.

Week 1 (to the 8th January) 2021 figures for E&W are in and unfortunately there is a massive increase in deaths compared to normal. The 5YA figure for week is 12,175 which is pretty high compared to the rest of the year as January always has the highest figures, however the deaths for week 1 2021 are 17,751 which is 45% above normal - now an amount of that might be due to a bank holiday that would normally be in week one and isn't this year but that would only account for less than 10%. This is the biggest excess death figure since April, there were only 5 bigger excess death weeks in all of the covid time and only 4 weeks with bigger numbers overall.

Hospitalisations are also still going up but it is definitely slowing down, for all of the lockdown skeptics these figures should finally shut them up (it won't) because in the UK we simply haven't managed the virus at all. I hear that we now have the worst deaths per population than anywhere now.

Also, and this is something that needs to be explored further but I have family members who have now got covid for the second time, which raises a big question around herd immunity. They are a family that have kids in school, older kids at work, the kids travel between parents who both have partners that come and go and the older kids move between their family and the boyfriends families. 

OK onto the good news that I planned to start with, the vaccine roll out - credit where it is due there is a big effort going on with a mass vaccination centre both locally and at millennium point. Really well done for getting that going to the government. In the UK as of 17th Jan there were over 4m have had their 1st dose and 400k had their second dose, and although it doesn't work like this that is the equivalent of all the over 80s having the 1st jab with about 30% of the over 75s done, with the equivalent of all 75% of the over 90s getting both jabs.

I think the above news means that we really have to stay vigilant for the next few months until we can start to live a normal life again.

Best wishes to your family members that are suffering Covid for a second time. Are their symptoms as bad 2nd time around? I hope they recover quickly.  This is very disappointing news.  Let's face it, we are all hoping there will be some form of immunity after contracting the virus, however long or short a time it is. The fact is that of the millions worldwide that have now had the illness, there are not that many that have apparently had it twice so I will take some hope from that.
2nd Point highlighted. I suppose, having slammed the government plenty we ought to give them credit for the speed at which they have rolled out the vaccinations. Unfortunately, the first thing that jumps into my head is that the praise realistically should go to the NHS. The second thing I think of is wouldn't it have been much better to let them handle the track and trace programme too? Maybe it's just that £12Billion that keeps bugging me.