I didn't say it was overwhelmed, I said to prevent it being overwhelmed.

It's easy to knock up thousands of beds to look good on telleh - not so easy to knock up (oo-er) the trained nurses to staff them. 4000 ICU beds in Nightingale - anyone got 2800 ICU nurses spare (700 nurses at a time on shift and accounting for sickness/time off and diluting the normal ratio from 1:1 to 6:1  - https://www.hsj.co.uk/exclusive-intensive-care-staffing-ratios-dramatically-diluted/7027214.article)? Not to mention support staff and the consultants? Where would they stay? How would you get ventilated patients there?

They have said as much, Four, but of course they had been preparing for a flood of Co-19 emergencies. Now they can see there is scope to catch up on the more usual medical activity and are becoming conscious that as the delays mount up so will the possible severity of each individual case too. With that in mind I contacted my GP about an issue today and have been referred to be seen within 2 weeks, but he specifically said:

"Due to Covid 19, the hospital will triage the referral and contact you with a plan from there. If you have not heard anything within 2 weeks, something may have gone wrong, so please contact us and let us know if this is the case, do not leave it."

Roger

p.s. update at 4pm: Hospital has just rung to make an appointment for this Thursday.

R

Coronavirus quandary: Some patients in S Korea get virus again

Uncertainty over the reinfection or reactivation of the virus in patients could affect vaccine development.

" the country is now grappling with a new problem: at least 222 people have tested positive for the virus again after recovering, and experts are not sure why."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/coronavirus-quandary-patients-south-korea-200426235141488.html

But isn't that starting from the premise that you 'need' clothes, as opposed to fancy buying something new to wear?  Aside from when you have growing children, much of our clothing purchases are not really due to 'need' as he defined it, are they?

I have read a few articles about this and unless i have missed it (quite possible) there has been no mention of how seriously ill these people are. As no-one seems to have said it, i assume these people are not being rushed to hospital etc. Of course, this is still a concerning development and these people could infect other people who have not yet had the virus.

Last 3 Monday's like for like in England

• 27th - 329 


• 20th - 482


• 13th - 667

Someone else in need of a lesson in basic comprehension.

'prevent them being overwhelmed' is wholly different to 'overwhelmed'.

Yes I think that was the whole point of the exercise to ensure we had capacity

329 new deaths in England by date

• 58 on April 26th


• 162 on April 25th


• 50 on April 24th


• 40 between April 1st and April 23rd 


• 19 in March with one on March 17th

‘It’s not clear if we’ll have a glimpse of Boris Johnson,’ gushes Laura Kuenssberg on #bbcr4today, like a schoolgirl fan of some teen idol.

— Tim Walker (@ThatTimWalker) April 27, 2020

To avoid being disingenuous, John, I'd advise you read my last few posts before you use the word "constantly", which you will discover is not accurate.  All done with kindness, as my blacksmith boss used to say....

Roger

I thought the nightingale hospitals were also there for when we eventually resume routine operations and treatments that have otherwise been postponed. Any uptick in Covid-19 hospitalisations can then be better handled because we have prepared for it.

None of them actually got ill, but remains to be seen if they are infectious. If they are then of course that would be a problem and another new for this virus, which seems brilliant at spreading itself via non symptomatic hosts - mainly children and younger people. 

Yes

My own view as an non expert armchair observer is that the only way this thing could have spread so rapidly is via children and young people who had no symptoms, just like the bats - who all got it but didn't get ill according to the Horizon doc

You could well be right Beast and that's the problem, we just don't know enough about the virus yet to confidently return to any kind of normality. 

I am staggered by the number of apparently intelligent people in The Times comment section, who are lamenting that the proposed 14 day quarantine for those arriving in the UK from overseas (whether nationals or not), will make it almost impossible for them to take a foreign holiday this summer.

I mean - does anybody in his right mind really think that spending a couple of weeks on the Costas or in Greece or Italy or the USA this summer is a viable and sensible proposition? Really?

So far as UK travellers are concerned, even if such rules aren't applied; the country people want to travel to is more likely to apply quarantine rules for incoming Brits, or prevent them entering.

Can we borrow your crystal ball?

Monday's NHS England deaths by actual day chart for showing a continuing decline in the rolling average and the lowest daily figure this month:

(open in new tab for full size)