Sounds credible.

Was the virus in France last year?

The number of new recorded deaths is the lowest since late March, when only deaths in hospitals were being recorded. The new figures include deaths in care homes and have been declining for several days.

Meanwhile, an intensive care chief in the Paris region has told local media that the virus was present in France on 27 December - a month before the first cases were confirmed.

Yves Cohen told broadcaster BFMTV that his team had revisited negative tests for flu and other coronaviruses on 24 patients who had been in hospital with respiratory symptoms in December and January.

"Of the 24 patients, we had one positive result for Covid-19 on 27 December when he was in hospital with us," he said, adding that the test had been repeated several times to confirm the result.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52524001

Something that is not being made clear is how many of our new infections are at healthcare facilities (hospitals, GP surgeries and care homes). It's possible IMO that a considerable proportion (~half?) of new infections are from there and not in the community.

At the moment our number of new infections is still too high.

Bet that's a trust thing 

This sounds like a breakthrough:

Roche said its antibody test, Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2, has a specificity rate of about 99.8% and sensitivity rate of 100%. The company had previously pledged to make its antibody test available by early May and to boost production by June to “high double-digit millions” per month.

The test requires an intravenous blood draw, but it could still be a game changer.

As long as managers can measure the productivity of their workers I don't see why working from home or the beach or Timbuktu is an issue. Once I'd become an established IT contractor I would always ask the person/s interviewing me if I could work from home for at least a significant percentage of the week. If it wasn't an option I would look elsewhere. It generally wasn't a problem. Even many years ago when contracting at the conservative insurance group Mitsui Sumitomo I was able to come to an agreement where I did either 2 or 3 days from home each week. My advice is for people to have self confidence and a bit of "front" if they want to pursue working from home. (I realise MANY jobs can not be done remotely!)

Agreed. I usually work from home 1-2 days a week and 4-5 weeks in the summer and I didn't really negotiate it, it was a take it or leave it approach to my employer. They are more than happy with it, because it's easy to measure productivity and performance.

Anyway, here is some more info on the antibody developed from Roche.

https://diagnostics.roche.com/global/en/products/params/elecsys-anti-sars-cov-2.html

Both dangerous activities. I live alone, so it might be hard to cut my own hair, though of course I have never tried it with a machine but its getting too long now even for clippers? I have been trimming my fringe with scissors, but I cant do the back, so its turning into a Chris Waddle

Yes and to think there are not too many layers we can tighten restrictions on, just what is causing this consistently high figures. We need to understand what is driving this so it can be tackled in some way, as assume it is nationwide. My gut feeling is it is mainly supermarkets where it is only just about the only place where people congregate to some degree. We need to sort this out, or at least find the cause before any measures are relaxed otherwise we will never be able to address the problem.

Shame

They do like throwing people out of windows. Check out the latest series of Killing Eve

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTHH5xvQZyc

Ponytail time, Beast! My beard is getting magnificent! Pity it's white - I'm going to have to work on my HoHoHos!

R.

A not so cynical person might think that the government doesn't explain the distribution of new infections, because a lot of them could be caused by inadequate PPE at health care facilities. Not me though, I have 100% confidence and loyalty to HMG.

It's one of a few >99% accuracy tests that have gained the CE mark - my dad's old company, Abbott Labs, had one certified a few days earlier.

Hopefully we'll see these being offered to the public sooner rather than later - they're the key, IMO, to restoring a semblance of normality.

You’ll need to practice a lot because there will be lots of competition.

Might even be a few barbers testing out a second job...