hello and welcome to this talk it's
sunday the 21st of march
um it's a weekend so i'm not going to do
too many numbers but we'll start off
with some news from the states and
europe and we're going to look at russia
today as well oh and if we get time
we'll have a report from australia as
well
now um the situation in the states um
you've probably seen that news footage
about the partying in florida and the
police
forcibly breaking it up
thousands of people in the streets now
it's not so much the outdoor activity
that's the concern
but it's what goes on in the bars after
that before that what goes on in terms
of socializing before and after
that that could well be super spread or
events as it seems uh
tens of thousands of young people
especially
are going to florida for their spring
break
so um it is going to have implications
there's no question about it now
hopefully the vaccines in the states
will be ahead of this but this is
definitely going to cause at least some
localized increases uh young people of
course going from florida back home to
wherever they're from are going to
spread the vice with them and of course
the implications for the people of
florida could be quite significant
as well
so the curfew technically is 8 p.m to 6
a.m it is enforced that's probably going
to be there till april
now the news report this one says hard
partying crowds which presumably means
quite a lot of drinking
uh trash restaurants brawled in the
streets gathered in thousands without
mass or social distancing
now as i say not so much the outside
that's the issue it's the inside that's
the problem so there will be increasing
cases and
what we're concerned about moving on to
europe is the third wave now there's no
question this is underway underway now
it's driven by the new variants here we
see it clearly in the netherlands for
example where there's been a
increase in cases of about 25 percent
in the past week
now germany and the robert
institute for infectious diseases
what they do is they model the um the
number of cases now
and of course they know that in a week
people are going to start getting
symptoms a week after that or two weeks
after that people are going to start
getting sick and a week after that
people are probably going to die so they
model that in
and they work out what their intensive
care capacity is and basically they've
just exceeded their intensive care
capacity for next month
because of course the delay
so this is from the robert
institute for infectious diseases
now cases per 100 000 per week currently
104
um and the threshold is 100.
so that means after the delay um
intensive care's units in germany for
germany as a whole are going to be over
capacity and they're going to have to
make additional provisions
now because of the increase in cases
this this becomes
essentially inevitable
because we know that these numbers are
going to feed through into some severely
ill people and and some deaths france
likewise intensive care capacity is its
highest this year we know that patients
have been taken from intensive care in
paris to be managed in in other
hospitals so paris has already exceeded
its intensive care capacity
and the number of people in intensive
care increased by 66 in the past 24
hours
now getting on for four and a half
thousand
which is a new high for uh for 2021 in
france and of course
the the increase in cases in the recent
weeks and that are still increasing
are going to feed through to that so
far from getting a summer break
uh or an early summer break europe is
going to have um
a lot of a lot of poorly people all at
the same time
unfortunately as the third wave driven
by largely the uk
variant but other variants as well
there's a new variant just arisen in
france we don't know much about it yet
but of course new variants are going to
arise all the time and by definition the
ones that are going to become more
prevalent or the more transmissible
forms
um so it's not looking particularly good
for spring and early summer in europe
and this isn't helping india serum
institute in pune
it's already announced delays five
million less doses of vaccine going to
the uk
and here we have less vaccine going to
brazil morocco saudi arabia as well
isn't it bizarre that the world it's got
has got itself into this
ludicrous situation
where we depend on basically one uh
complex in india
for a large proportion of the world's
vaccines
um
quite quite bizarre
we've known this pandemic's coming for a
long long time or a pandemic and yet
that's the situation the world finds it
in
so knock-on effects in brazil morocco
saudi arabia brazil is supposed to be
manufacturing its own astrazeneca oxford
astrazeneca vaccine but doesn't seem to
be doing so at scale at the moment
now tanzania we send our condolences to
the people of tanzania for the death of
their president age 61.
now the president um
was a long-term uh covered skeptic he
mocked
the efficacy of masks he expressed
doubts about testing
he advised spiritual approaches uh to
treating the virus
and herbal infused steam therapy now
nothing against spiritual approaches
nothing against
properly used and
appropriate herbal infused steam therapy
but they are not curative measures and
they don't work instead of they should
be as well as
and um
officially the president has died in the
deva or forgotten the name of the
capital now dara salam something like
that dara salam i think
um probably pronounced that wrong
of heart failure but um almost certainly
well there's a very strong suspicion as
he died of
covered 19 as are many other people in
canada tanzania but we don't know how
many because records aren't being kept
um it's almost well it is deliberate uh
deliberate um lack of
information from tanzania so sad that
the president's died how how many other
people have died we don't know so deaths
we don't know
cases
we don't know
but the records simply are not being
kept and deliberately so so
um sad situation in tanzania having
having pretty well avoided the first
wave now seems to be suffering quite
significantly
now
in the uk we've got this sort of um this
that we've been referring to from time
to time
and it it is our
this is this is kind of the uh the
timetable for uh
easing the lockdown that we've looked at
before in the uk
now if we look at this timetable and of
course we're kind of uh we're kind of
here now
that the next major thing that should
happen to ease lockdown is 29th of march
outdoor gathering six people or two
households will be allowed
including in private gardens and outdoor
sporting events
but what everyone's kind of well a lot
of people are kind of chomping at the
bit waiting for
is uh the announcement on abe that's due
on april the 12th
and on april the 12th uh
they were expecting an announcement to
review international leisure travel
announced by the 12th of april at the
earlier so we're expecting this to be
announced
but um
it looks like
at least in the early part of summer
international holiday-based travel will
not
be happening because a government
minister i think is a defense minister
but nevertheless a government minister
are saying that uh we can't
be deaf and blind to what's going on
outside the united kingdom
what he means by that is these new
variants that are emerging all over all
over the world now a new french variant
the south africa variant the brazilian
variant california variant new york
variant
all of these will just be brought back
to the uk
and we'll lose all the advantages that
we've had
so um
looking pessimistic for
uh for travel in the um in the early
stages of the year at least
now um i think we'll look at some um zoe
uh symptom tracker app data
um let's just look at the uh the main
site here first of all just for today
so
we see the uh
the prevalence is down to 74 000 but
that's still not a small number of
course people are currently predicted to
have symptomatic over 19 in the uk
and it looks like the northeast of
england's a bit of a hot spot there
doesn't it that's much darker red than
we would like to see
but going on down
we see that the new case is four and a
half thousand so that continues to go
down which is good
that's the trend that we've seen maybe
look at the animated version of that
so here we see
we've had the summer break cases went
down in summer of course september they
started going up
so we had this increase in cases then we
had that tiered system
remember we had tiers one two three four
and that brought the cases down somewhat
and that was working until
until the new variant hitters the uk
variant and that's what that caused
and then we had the overall lock down
and then round about there we start to
get some effect from the vaccines as
well
so that's kind of a potted history of of
what happened
in in the uk shown by that graph there
now um
this is kind of the summary from from
the uh coverage symptom tracker app
uh now this is based on 6565
antigen tests and a million people
reporting of course who i am one and i
expect you are if you are watching this
this video
now um this is last week's data because
this is all the summary data of course
is always going to be a little bit
delayed
so um cases over the past week uh four
thousand
uh
470 cases on average over the past
week because we remember that the where
are we here remember the number of new
cases today
was um
4526
so
basically you'd have to say things have
kind of flattened off a bit there really
on that late on those latest figures
wouldn't you
but that's anyway that's over there
that's over the past that's over the
past uh
the past week
um now the week before that it was
higher so it's down from the week before
so that that's two weeks ago
so that's two weeks ago that's around
about now
so down 18 from the last week which is
good and down 93 percent from the peak
which was
dear me we were getting nearly 70 000
cases per day
and that peak was on roundabout the 1st
of
january so um down 18 last week but
flattening off this week it has to be
said
uh in terms of uh reduction in
symptomatic cases in the uk
now the prevalence at the moment uh the
symptom tracker app calculates to be 1
in
823 so this has gone down quite nicely
but as we say appears to be flattening
off now
so that's the uk
prevalence of currently symptomatic
people now that's the prevalence in the
general population this is interesting
prevalence in the general population one
in 823
prevalence in school-aged children
one in
1369 and this is after about two weeks
back at school isn't it
so we do see that children are being
less commonly infected than adults yes
we knew that
but
there's a lot of children of course so
even though there's only one in 1 369
that's still going to be taking it back
to a lot of parents and we did see that
there was quite a
an increase in cases in that case study
we looked at in manchester
um a few days ago
so um
less children getting the disease
compared to adults as we expected uh but
still an overall fairly large number so
the ukr value for last week
0.8
england 0.8 wales and scotland slightly
higher
so that's kind of the
summary data for the past week from the
coverage symptom tracker app still about
four and a half thousand new cases per
day though
so um it seems to be um
that the rate of decrease is slowing
as the numbers go down
now interestingly um and okay it's not a
massive survey but i can't remember how
many it's based on it's quite large
numbers
zoe has found no link between covered
vaccination either the covered
vaccinations and the risks of blood
clots
now we don't expect there to be any more
veno thromboembolisms as we've talked
about before these blood clots that
occur in the deep veins of the leg and
goes to the lungs
what we're worried about is is the very
very minuscule increase
in the risk of the sinus
cerebral sinus vein
thrombosis is very minimal but that
hasn't been detected by the covered
symptom tracker wrap the numbers are so
low
now tim spector comments on this
um
after steady falls at the beginning of
the
of the week we've seen a leveling off in
recent days that's interesting so
tim spector seems to agree with me
my speculations from before
especially in scotland wales in the
northeast of england so as we noticed
so um that's confirmed by professor
spector who of course is the lead
scientist
um
now this that's interesting he says this
is to be expected after reopening of
schools across the country and there's
no reason to worry so um tim spector was
actually expecting this uh increase
as schools open and in fact we did talk
about this we did say that cases will
and never there's inevitably going to be
more spread through schools opening
inevitably
so what we've seen is an increase in
children to some extent albeit one in
1300 children whatever it was
but that's caused a leveling off in
cases in the country generally
and uh tim spector was expecting this
based on his coveted symptom data
so it's not not on not unsurprising not
surprising and we're keeping a close eye
on cases in school-aged children and so
far there's nothing alarming about the
data so this is what it is expecting
i believe we'll see case numbers holding
steady for a little while before they
drop again
so um probably flat for the next week or
two or hopefully not three but week or
two and then they'll start to drop off
again so interesting that we had
anticipated this with schools going back
and of course this is exactly uh exactly
what's happened and it's it's good to
see that professor specter's not
surprised by it either
it's the price of schools going back
it's that simple
now at the start of this pandemic we're
looking at countries like iran and
russia and thinking well what is going
on to the with the poor people in the in
these countries because there was a lack
of data
now russia um we pretty well do have um
some fairly convincing data from russia
now
so i'll just show you i'll just show you
that
um
actually i think i think i've just show
no i'm going to go back a minute i know
this is appalling but i'm just going to
show you this because i was going to
show you this under england and what
this does is this shows the
the graph from the from the office for
national statistics day to the react
study
and which of course measures antibodies
and antigens and the coverage symptom
tracker data
so we see the three lots of data here
and we do see that they're fairly
consistent
they're following this generally the
same line so so that's encouraging that
these three different ways of gathering
data are the same so we have the
official office for national statistics
data we have the covered symptom tracker
app data and we have the react study
data which directly measures antibodies
and antigen tests and they're all coming
up with roughly the same numbers
indicating they're probably all fairly
accurate
i meant to mention that anyway so so
that's good anyway getting back to
russia um basically um it's not good
news really um
comparison and um so
russian death toll now uh there's been
uh 4.4 million official cases in russia
and 93 000 and a half 93.5 000 deaths
most restrictions were lifted in june
there's essentially no restrictions now
in most of russia
face masks are mostly worn though in
public we believe in most parts of
russia
now this chap here is a demographer now
i'm only saying his name because he's in
the national press
otherwise i wouldn't but it's in the
national press so
i think that's okay
if russian stops at 500 000 excess
deaths that this will be a good scenario
now what what the situation here is that
um
we've got the official death toll from
covered in 19 in russia which of course
is
underestimated it's quite hard to be uh
diagnosed a death to be diagnosed with
copper 19 in russia
but the data that collects the official
excessing deaths that system actually
works
so basically for any epidemiologist or
numbers person who wants to look
they can see that the difference between
the number of officially reported
covered deaths and the total excess
deaths
many of which will be from covered 19 of
course are dramatically different
so uh that's the number of official
deaths
populations 144 million is expecting it
to is hoping it doesn't top out at more
than half a million
so we see that the uh the death toll in
russia
well the population is less than half
isn't it so the death toll in russia is
is um at least double per capita what it
is in the united states now the death
toll in the united states is horrendous
but it looks like the death toll in in
russia is
double
uh
double or more than double the the
united states numbers
um due to gross uh under reporting
now
um
so this chap calculates that the current
toll is nearer for nearing 450 000
so another 50 or 60 000 deaths
potentially to go probably this year
um
in coverage you choose between the
economy and people's lives mostly older
people's lives is a direct quote
the russian state chooses the economy
they won't say this so this but it's
obvious
who's to say it's right or wrong i'm
just reporting what it is so it looks
like the number of people that have died
in russia
is not what is on the johns hopkins site
uh 93
547. the real number is probably getting
near 450 000 and we're hoping it doesn't
go beyond half a million
so this is from these people have been
looking at the federal state uh
statistics service
which is quite functional in russia
apparently so the city of perm for
example about a million people
in autumn there was a four four months
sergio autumn the last part of 2020.
the official death for the hold of the
pandemic in in uh perm was
1869
but the
national
data gathering agency in russia puts
that at 2
38 and the excess mortality is 5 683
evidenced by the difference between
2019 and 2020.
this being pre-pandemic of course
this being pandemic
so this is looking like a more accurate
way that we're actually getting to some
um
truth
about the uh the death rate in russia
and it looks like it's pretty well
double
the the united states
um
now this chap here is a doctor in perm
chief doctor perm region hospital
he says this you can't leave people
without work obviously the best
protection would be a spacesuit
but you can't wear that for a whole year
so we look for a reasonable balance
so that's the chief doctor in perm
um
i'm sure not everyone is promoted to
that level
um i'm sure there's reasons why it's
been promoted to that level
uh sputnik vaccine uh four million doses
given out so far in russia
uh health ministry target of sixty
percent of all adults in six months four
million so that's like that's like what
three percent now so this target has
become laughable
um
now
the verda center 30 of russians willing
to receive the sputnik vaccine that
means 70 percent aren't
that's eight percent down since the
beginning of the rollout and as far as
we know president putin has not been
vaccinated
now of course the french prime minister
um was vaccinated in
public the british
prime minister was vaccinated in public
president biden in the united states was
vaccinated in public but as far as we
know president putin has not been
vaccinated now the irony here with this
mistrust of the sputnik 5 vaccine
is is is they started seeming to do this
on the quiet but since then the
published proper phase 3 clinical trials
in in peer-reviewed journals and it's a
really good vaccine from all this data
so it's just ironic that this mistrust
has been sown in the vaccine from
from early uh early stages which is
which is a great pity
right
now um
i went i took my mum for a second um
oxford astrazeneca vaccine yesterday so
i was delighted surgery ran up and said
can you come around now so of course i
went round picked her up
and um when i was when i was going into
the car park um everything was really
well organized and it turns out a local
bloke
volunteer called paul
has been organizing he's got this
one-way system and it all flows around
and it's all perfect and it's all good
humid so i thought i thought it'd be
worth having a chat to him to be quite
honest so um
paul let's uh let's talk
right we're talking to paul paul you've
had a really good idea it's a one-way
system isn't it yep
what gave you the idea it was just
really just to hold the traffic up long
enough to be able to flow back into the
car park yeah just to stop any tailbacks
going on to onto the main road basically
well i'm here for my mum's second jab
which is fantastic and the first time i
came it was chaos
and this time
we've got like uh you've got all your
marshals in place
you do a loop around the car part there
then you do a loop out there
and then you've actually
chiseled through an extra an extra
entrance another exit yeah yeah yeah he
was after that friday when we had the
absolute chaos yeah we had to sort of
like sit down and kind of draw it out
and look at what we're doing yeah just
taking a few goals
you know get it right yeah we've got it
something like
and there's no there's no congestion at
all is there no no whatsoever so two
thousand what one gp surgery in the day
yeah yeah yeah and the very worst that
it is you know we might get a couple of
cars just back to here just while
they're getting in and out of
wheelchairs
it works
pretty well now the worst case scenario
we can always use that as an extra car
park yeah
sure you know so but as long as you've
got the flow it's uh it's great isn't it
we find that it it holds them up just
long enough for them to be leaving as
they're coming in it's just a constant
loop so now i think i think it's
brilliant and this is exactly the sort
of initiative we need i mean you're not
a medical man yourself you've got a
technical background haven't you yeah
yeah so you know that that someone like
you contributes towards the mass
vaccination campaign is is directly
saving lives i mean i think i'm i think
it's just marvelous yeah no it's good
laughs
but like say we you know all these guys
help it's not just you know all these
guys yeah the
we're all working every saturday so and
i must say i drove in everyone was
friendly everything was harmonious
everyone was
told what to do
everyone sees that as soon as you see
that you think oh that's a good idea you
know and
then you're away it doesn't it does work
really well like yeah just give it a
call
very worst case scenario you know we
just have one tail back to the road yeah
until it cleared so yeah
that's yeah yeah
worry was ambulance just getting through
when this gets injected
yeah yeah congested yeah yeah yeah
yeah that's how we did it right there
you go folks every community should have
paul
uh helping out using clear logical
thinking
so good stuff model to duplicate for
around the world
paul thank you
appreciate it thank you
for the paper
yeah i've told him i've told him the
channel he's going to leave a comment i
see yeah so there we go done
right we're talking to paul paul you've
had a really good so there you go that
was me and my mum
and my mum leaving now it's 24 hours
since her second oxford astrozenica
vaccine and she is completely symptom
free which is excellent now she felt a
bit ropey for the first couple of days
after the first oxford astrozenica
vaccine
24 hours after the second dose she feels
perfectly 100
normal so that's pretty good news now
what we had there we had we had we had
paul who was doing voluntary duty in the
car park he thought this isn't working
there's chaos on friday
so we talked to the council and he got
them to
open up this extra bit so the cars could
go in like do a loop round come back
facing the other way go to the car park
parked in the car park dropped my mum
off she was back out she was actually
waiting for me impatient well not
impatiently but she was back out and
waiting for me by the time i talked to
paul
and then you saw us drive out of that
extra exit that paul had made
so just
one guy there went in assessed the
problem bit of lateral thinking got the
council on side and i was there about
one o'clock and that one surgery had
done two thousand vaccinations
because paul had smoothed out a through
system
for getting people in and out
and i'm sure they did another thousand
vaccines before close of play so about
two and a half three thousand vaccines
in one area because one guy had actually
thought about the problem so
um
absolutely brilliant and uh but
basically paul i want to thank you
because you allowed my mum to get
vaccinated
um okay there's everyone else involved
in the team but but you know you made
that flow smoothly and just a model for
people to follow around the world so
great stuff now um
the last thing i want to do today is get
an update from australia
and a lot of you i know are now fans of
dr susan oliver
so let's get an australia update from dr
susan
hello this is susan from sydney with
another covert update now in my last
update i met i mentioned that we'd
actually had two local cases in
australia one in brisbane one in sydney
uh the good news is that it appears
neither of those cases has spread
further
and we're quite relieved because genomic
testing showed that both cases were the
b117 variant which as we know spreads a
lot faster so we're feeling very
relieved of course um
as you know the incubation period is 14
days so it is possible
we still may see some cases but everyone
who is a close contact
has been identified and they are all
isolated and they will remain they will
remain isolated for 14 days after their
last contact with the case
now i think a lot of people are probably
thinking why why are you even talking
about two cases at such a low number and
of course it is and we are very happy in
australia that we do only have two local
cases we do also have 150 active cases
which were required overseas and
they do present some risk because of
course they need to be treated and ppe
is not infallible
but the reason we
take every case seriously and every time
there is a case it makes the news in in
australia
is we know in australia how quickly one
case can turn into 100 cases and we saw
that in sydney um over christmas we had
one case escape from hotel quarantine we
don't quite even know how but there was
a super spreading event at a local club
that infected 30 people those people
then went to other places and before we
knew it there was 150 cases and some
experts were predicting that we would be
up to a thousand cases a day by
new year's new year's day we weren't
because um
we've done this before and we
contact traced every single one of those
150 cases every single person was
isolated also the local area where the
cases had emerged was put into lockdown
most people had a rather miserable
christmas and we and other people really
appreciated the sacrifice that they made
um
at the moment in new south wales you
might notice i wear my wet weather gear
i've just come in from outside and it is
absolutely bucketing down rain um
it's for me it's just a i guess a
inconvenience but for a lot of new south
wales it's a lot worse um
parts of new south wales are
experiencing the worst flooding in 100
years
um it means a lot
a lot of people have had to be evacuated
from their homes and they're going to
evacuation centers so can you imagine
just if you just had one case in one of
those evacuation centers that could just
spread like wildfire because you know
evacuation centers aren't designed
for social distancing they're not
designed with good ventilation etc etc
they're just designed to give people
somewhere safe to go and and by the way
people can also take their pets if
anyone's worried about what's happening
with the pets
now on to the vaccine role i roll out
we're now up to a quarter of a million
people in australia who have been
vaccinated um that's about one percent
of the population so we've still got a
way to go but we're getting there
and um
tomorrow
is v day it's not really called that but
i thought it sounds cool um and that is
the start of the phase 2b
and using our local supplies which have
just been approved by the tga so phase
2b is over 70s indigenous people over 55
and
people of any age with certain high risk
conditions and also
profession people who work in high-risk
professions so they will be
the healthcare workers who aren't
already in who weren't already in phase
1a and
people who work in meat processing
factories where we've actually had quite
a few outbreaks and also emergency
services personnel now that roller
rollout will be across initially 1000 gp
clinics but it will be ramping up to
four and a half thousand over the next
four weeks now there was a little bit of
a pallava
with with the roll out because um on
wednesday just gone the government sort
of put up a website that had details of
the 1000 um
gps now in phase 2b there's 6 million
people in included and it's probably a
bit of an exaggeration but quite a large
proportion of those six million people
rang the 1000 clinics and of course the
poor receptionist were absolutely
inundated with phone calls
um
but there is a silver lining to it
because it means there are a lot of
people in australia who are very keen to
get vaccinated and we really do want as
many people to be vaccinated as possible
um there will be in new south wales
because of the flooding which i told you
about that is going to be delaying the
roll out because a lot of roads are just
i just um blocked and so the suppliers
can't get through but hopefully that's
only going to be a temporary setback and
hopefully all the people
in the flooded areas are going to stay
safe and i hope you all stay safe too
thank you
hello
where am i
there i am all right
susan thank you so much for the
excellent update
uh
just think of it that the b117 could
have escaped into australia and it would
have been disastrous
it would have been exactly the same
cataclysmic situation as in the uk
necessitating national lockdowns and you
avoided that with 14 days isolation of
two two cases
150 cases all being quarantined and
isolated
one percent of the population vaccinated
so far but i do know you're targeting
the most at-risk people people that work
in the quarantine centers whereas where
the imported cases are getting in and
great to know that the vaccines produced
in melbourne are hitting the streets
while hitting the clinics um
tomorrow so absolutely marvelous thank
you for the excellent update again susan
very perceptive and uh informatively
done we appreciate it and
thank you for watching this video of
course