Quote of the day 23rd April 2020

“This disease is not going to be eradicated, it is not going to disappear. 

“We have to accept that we are working with a disease that we are going to be with globally for the foreseeable future.” 

“If people are hoping it’s going to suddenly move from where we are now in lockdown suddenly into everything’s gone, that is a wholly unrealistic expectation. 

“We are going to have to do a lot of things for really quite a long period of time, the question is what is the best package.”

(UK Government chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty, 22nd April 2020)

Comments

Jim said…
would be interesting to know a bit more about the viruses mutation profile. What sort of immunity does a previous have, and for how long.

On another note, the sports centre nightingale, as well as a lot of other nightingale hospitsals. Why are these an overspill unit, surely it would make more sense to use nightingales as the Covid units, and allow the general hospitals to return to general treatment. People with cancer treatments and other diseases seem to be the ones being left out. Of course by their very nature they are weakened with underlying conditions so are corona fodder. The risk of nosocomial infection is very high. For all its glory the NHS and its hospitals have always been pretty rubbish at containing disease, so something that spreads like covid is of course a major problem.

I really cant see the point of building these units and then not using them. I know the government are trying to get out the message that "the NHS is still open for issues other than covid, and please use it" though the problem is people are terrified of using it, for fear catching the virus. By nature of their design the general hospitals are a covid hot spot.


1:26 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
It certainly would be interesting - and indeed very useful - to know the mutation profile of this virus. As I understand it we know very little about the damn thing.

One of the things the experts specifically say we do not know yet is whether, and if so to what extent and for how long, people who have already had it have immunity.

On the capacity issue and the Nightingale hospitals - it looks like we've got through this first wave without needing all the capacity which was created or cleared. We didn't necessarily know beforehand whether that would be the case,

Nor can we be certain that there won't be a second wave, and if there is one or more further waves of the virus to come they might be worse.

Better to have excess capacity than to have what has happened in some other countries (but not yet in the UK) where people are dying not just of COVID-19 but other things who should have been saved but did not get treatment because the hospitals were overwhelmed.

There are steps being taken to try to ensure that the people who are being treated for COVID-19 do not infect those being treated for other things. But your suggestion, Jim, that perhaps we should have specific units for Coronavirus patients is not without advantages and should probably be considered.
10:45 pm
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