Coronavirus - how is it/has it affected you?

Ethan

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My daughter had similar with track and trace. They asked about her daughter and who she had close contact with. She said the other children in her class- "What are their contact details". Apart from a few she doesn't know others details. "But who was she in close contact with and their details". How is she supposed to know her actual movements during the day. And that was after she went through the same questions for her son a few days earlier.
Very frustrating!

The algorithm says to collect contact details. I would have thought her year and class should be enough and T&T can chase it up with the school.
 

ColchesterFC

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The algorithm says to collect contact details. I would have thought her year and class should be enough and T&T can chase it up with the school.

For my younger son they only took school details - didn't take his year or class. As he'd played football on the Sunday they also wanted the address of where he'd played. As it was an away match we gave the postcode for the opposition. They didn't want any details of his own team.

I'm not convinced how much tracing and follow up is actually being done. It seems more like a stats counting thing to see where cases are geographically and then if it gets too many they try to do something about it.
 

Ethan

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For my younger son they only took school details - didn't take his year or class. As he'd played football on the Sunday they also wanted the address of where he'd played. As it was an away match we gave the postcode for the opposition. They didn't want any details of his own team.

I'm not convinced how much tracing and follow up is actually being done. It seems more like a stats counting thing to see where cases are geographically and then if it gets too many they try to do something about it.

T&T is now basically trying to justify its existence and expense. I hope policy decisions are made on the basis of reliable epidemiological data rather than T&T numbers which have been shown to be very unreliable.
 

HomerJSimpson

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Wife's school has had so many cases from both teachers and pupils PHE got involved and were on site testing staff and children on Saturday and are considering having to either close temporarily (definite staff shortages) or impose restrictions. We jumped from 3 cases on Friday to 7 over the weekend (5 out of 7 unvaccinated)
 

ColchesterFC

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They've changed the guidance for schools since last week. When younger son tested positive the older one had to stay away from school and get a PCR test on the third day. Spoke to his school this morning after me and Mrs Colch have tested positive and he's now allowed to go to school as long as he has negative LFT every day and then get a PCR test on day five. It just seems as though they're making it up as they go along.
 

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Daughter #2 has Covid, as does the g´daughter. They were at a family party on Saturday. 42 people!! Surely therés an indoor limit in the UK, or is there just recommendations?
 

Lord Tyrion

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Daughter #2 has Covid, as does the g´daughter. They were at a family party on Saturday. 42 people!! Surely therés an indoor limit in the UK, or is there just recommendations?
No limits in England, rest of the UK may be different. The only recommendations are to ventilate the room, open windows etc. No number restrictions.
 

Swinglowandslow

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The algorithm says to collect contact details. I would have thought her year and class should be enough and T&T can chase it up with the school.

Agreed , but Ethan, haven't the last few posts shown that T and T is a waste of time. Reemul has a positive case in his household, yet the rest are not isolating -see post 22186.
Just what is the point of ringing a positive test case and asking re contacts if the situation is as Reemul describes.
Seems to me T and T is only relevant in a lockdown scenario ?
Golfmmad's experience shows just how limited T and T can ever be.
Never able to recall and identify everyone(most) contacts anyway.
 

SwingsitlikeHogan

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I think it depends on the size of the venue, I've seen a few with a maximum capacity notice at the entrance .
My lad did three events in a Scotland about three weeks ago…there was over 200 at each. As it happens he mentioned that the vaccine passports side of things worked well with no hassle or delays for folk going in. That said there was no vaccine passport checking done at the turnstile when I was going into Hampden last Monday - or any of the turnstiles of the section of the ground. Mind you there were still thousands queuing to get in at kickoff so maybe they stopped bothering.
 

Ethan

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Agreed , but Ethan, haven't the last few posts shown that T and T is a waste of time. Reemul has a positive case in his household, yet the rest are not isolating -see post 22186.
Just what is the point of ringing a positive test case and asking re contacts if the situation is as Reemul describes.
Seems to me T and T is only relevant in a lockdown scenario ?
Golfmmad's experience shows just how limited T and T can ever be.
Never able to recall and identify everyone(most) contacts anyway.

T&T as currently set up is a massive waste of time and money. I have said here a number of times that stopping tracing by PHE in spring 2020 was a massive mistake, and instead of wasting time and money on Dido and Serco, they should have scaled up local PHE teams using other NHS staff unable to do their normal jobs and done the tracing as a localised and ground-level activity. Setting up mass testing facilities has a better rationale, so long as they properly categorise the people tested. We needed to know what test positive rates were for cases with symptoms, broken out from those tested as contacts or for routine surveillance.

I didn't mean to suggest that T&T would make a difference in the school, just that they don't need to interrogate a kid when they can ask the school.
 

Ethan

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A load of rubbish. He is essentially arguing that although AZ has demonstrably lower primary efficacy and antibody response, it has a superior T-cell response. This makes no sense and must be due to the large amount of wishful thinking added to the vaccine mixture. Both AZ and the mRNA vaccines interact with the immune system in the same way (not all the others do, Novavax for example), but the effects on antibodies and T-cells appear to be proportional. Measuring antibodies is easy, measuring T-cell activity is somewhat harder, but measuring clinical effects overrides both, and mRNAs are clearly more effective. AZ is a good vaccine, though, and has a place. It is worth also noting that the JCVI chose not to offer it as a booster, a decision they would not have taken had there been any evidence that it offered at least a similar additional effect as the mRNAs.

The reason the rest of Europe is now doing badly where the UK is doing better is that last winter the UK had a large cull of the most vulnerable and they can't die again this winter, and the UK also brought some of its winter pressure forward into the summer. Overall vaccination rates are now similar to the UK in a number of European countries. Arguably, given that they have lower (or no) use of AZ means the effective population immunity is better in a number. Eastern European and Balkan countries lag behind most badly.
 

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A load of rubbish. He is essentially arguing that although AZ has demonstrably lower primary efficacy and antibody response, it has a superior T-cell response. This makes no sense and must be due to the large amount of wishful thinking added to the vaccine mixture. Both AZ and the mRNA vaccines interact with the immune system in the same way (not all the others do, Novavax for example), but the effects on antibodies and T-cells appear to be proportional. Measuring antibodies is easy, measuring T-cell activity is somewhat harder, but measuring clinical effects overrides both, and mRNAs are clearly more effective. AZ is a good vaccine, though, and has a place. It is worth also noting that the JCVI chose not to offer it as a booster, a decision they would not have taken had there been any evidence that it offered at least a similar additional effect as the mRNAs.

The reason the rest of Europe is now doing badly where the UK is doing better is that last winter the UK had a large cull of the most vulnerable and they can't die again this winter, and the UK also brought some of its winter pressure forward into the summer. Overall vaccination rates are now similar to the UK in a number of European countries. Arguably, given that they have lower (or no) use of AZ means the effective population immunity is better in a number. Eastern European and Balkan countries lag behind most badly.

thank god for that. For a minute i thought maybe the UK had done something well!!
 

davidy233

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My lad did three events in a Scotland about three weeks ago…there was over 200 at each. As it happens he mentioned that the vaccine passports side of things worked well with no hassle or delays for folk going in. That said there was no vaccine passport checking done at the turnstile when I was going into Hampden last Monday - or any of the turnstiles of the section of the ground. Mind you there were still thousands queuing to get in at kickoff so maybe they stopped bothering.
Certainly stopped bothering at a football ground in Edinburgh I was at a month or so ago with 17,000 is fans - stewards stopped after a big queue built up in a short space of time
 

Ethan

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thank god for that. For a minute i thought maybe the UK had done something well!!

The UK did do something well. The doctors, nurses, reception staff, etc etc did a stellar job organising and administering the vaccine.

But your reply hints at the problem.

The vaccination strategy isn't a football match. It isn't a competition between AZ and Pfizer for the Vaccine World Cup. Nor is a matter for thinly disguised glee when there is an outbreak in Germany or France. If AZ is less efficacious than Pfizer, that isn't a problem so long as it is dealt with rationally, it is still a good vaccine, but the implications are that strategy for boosters and other precautions predicated on the immune profile of the population need to be considered carefully, not by defending the team. The JCVI made the right decision not to include AZ in the booster strategy.

Soriot was brought into AZ to sell the company, ironically to Pfizer. But he overplayed his hand and they walked away. He is known to be a bit of a .... what's that word ... and has over promised quite a few things with this vax. On Radio 4 this morning, he said "There's no proof of anything, we don't know, but we need more data to analyse this and get the answer." Let me translate that for you - "we are just making this stuff up" but it has achieved its intention of making headlines on BBC and Sky News. It may or may not be a coincidence that he was talking on the same day that Kate Bingham trailed a speech at which she robustly defends the UK procurement strategy, which of course majored on AZ.
 
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