Brighton and Hove is remaining in tier 2 following a government review.
Confirmed cases in the city are rising steeply, but are still at a lower level than other areas in the higher tiers.
Hastings and Rother, which has a higher rate, has been placed into tier 3.
In the seven days to December 13, 338 confirmed cases have so far been recorded, equal to a rate of about 116.5 per 100,000 people.
The city council bases its weekly statements on the number of cases from one Saturday to the following Friday.
In the most recent such seven day period, December 5 to December 11, there were 283 cases, a rate of 97.5 per 100,000 – a 63.5% rise on the previous period.
In the seven days to December 4, there were 173 cases, a rate of 59.5 per 100,000.
In tier 2, indoor mixing between households is banned, but people from the same households can go together to pubs and restaurants.
Groups of up to six from different households can meet outdoors, in private or public gardens – but not igloos or huts.
Alcohol can only be served as part of a substantial meal.
In tier 3, pubs and restaurants can only provide takeaway service. Cross-household meetings in private gardens are banned and the rule of six applies in public outdoor spaces such as parks.
we need a full lockdown until mid next year
we need to keep furlough going until at least mid next
we need to tax rich people on 50k+ to pay for it
we need to keep people at home
time to ACT NOW
…. We need NONE of that.
Has people’s Mental Health wellbeing ever entered your brain??Just because you may be coping ok it doesn’t mean millions of others are.Get a life and face up to the reality of what it’s like for the bulk of us!!
The advent (as it were) of the vaccine is encouraging but the logisitics of all this, within a worldwide perspective, means that there is a long way to go. Those of us within a stroll from and along the Hove seafront are blessed, and send good wishes to the unfortunate Hastings. Let this Christmas be one of deferred gratification. A lesson of this surreal year is that one does not need to scramble to buy things (though I have my eye on Neil Price’s new book about the Vikings…).
“Confirmed cases in the city are rising steeply”? how steep is steeply? what is the rate of increase? steep enough to panic the headline writers…
full lockdown now – extend furlough – tax rich on 50k+ to pay for it – job done – for the many
Could it be that “Labour Bill” doesn’t want to work for a living? I’m with “Rostrum” on this one.
America’s CDC says this supposed “virus” has NEVER BEEN ISOLATED, meaning there is no proof that it even exists.
Every year the seasonal influenza (influenza dell stelle to give it’s full name) kills large numbers of old people, mainly those who would probably have died anyway from pre-existing conditions.
Every death is a tragedy for those left behind, but nobody lives forever in this world. We all have to return to God sooner or later, and it seems to me that 2020 is not significantly different to any other year.
Why the hysteria though? They’ve never done that before, even in much worse years. Could it be that those in power may have other motives for spreading fear and panic?
Until flu vaccines came into widespread use, with varying effectiveness (for all sorts of understandable reasons), flu could easily take an extra 40-60,000 people, mainly elderly, in this country each year. We handled it as a nation, and globally, without this weird panic and without recourse to unnecessary authoritarian measures. When I look at how the Government and people in South Korea and Taiwan have responded, I am much more impressed. Even Sweden has done better than us, although they dealt with their care homes rather too similarly to our Government. It’s as though too many Western Governments have lost their sense of perspective and all sense of proportion and have been panicked into the worst kind of ‘group-think’. Putin and Xi Jinping must be laughing their socks off at how easily we yield our liberty and democracy.
The figures are bogus and the government are mixing flu with corona of ehich always hospitalise the elderly. Hospitals are always busier in winter months. It doesn’t matter what you die from the government will still put it down as corona virus. Face masks don’t work otherwise the rate would be falling. Yet the government still insist on tiers and ruining businesses and peoples Xmas. They are a joke. More people die from flu than corona virus and a fact is that when u are admitted to hospital for anything, you are put on a corona virus ward until your results come back and that’s only if they remember your there. I got left for 8 hours with people tested positive even though mine was negative. Nothing like passing on the virus.
Despite the best efforts of doctors, nurses and other NHS staff, cases are often passed from one person to another in hospital, often more than in almost any other ‘setting’, just as hospitals used to be breeding grounds for C.diff and the MRSA superbug.
And despite the best efforts of Facebook and Twitter to censor genuine and informed discussion of some aspects of this pandemic, the only recent study of the efficacy of masks was fairly inconclusive, with various experts differing – as is not uncommon – in their interpretation of the evidence. The BMJ published a fairly even-handed look at the Danish study and the brouhaha surrounding it.
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4586
What it probably is fair to say you, though, is that NICE, which authorizes medicines for prescribing in this country, probably wouldn’t authorize face masks for the public on the basis of the Danish study reported in the BMJ. If they make you feel safer, wear one, but it’s probably best to stick to focusing on face covering in clinical settings rather than for day-to-day use.
Like many, I’m hopeful that vaccination will offer us a route back to normality. It might not be plain sailing though. Anti-vaxxers are likely to jump on a presentation at the weekend by the CDC in the USA. The CDC is the equivalent of Public Health England, but much longer established and much more widely respected. How much should we make of the numbers suffering ‘Health Impact Events’? Almost 3 per cent of the first 112,000 patients to have the first dose of the available vaccines have suffered Health Impact Events leaving them ‘unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional’.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2020-12/slides-12-19/05-COVID-CLARK.pdf
Covid-19 is an unpleasant illness, like influenza, and can kill, but it tends to be most dangerous to the elderly and infirm. Much can and should be done to protect those most vulnerable to the virus, but responsible political leaders should also assess the risks of the actions they propose as well as the potential benefits. In living memory, we have not resorted to the sort of pandemic panic we are seeing now, and I fear it is doing much more harm than good.
Some might say that the Government’s initial strategy was based on achieving herd immunity. Certainly, herd immunity is a sensible goal, and one that vaccination could help us to achieve. Before we had a vaccine, responsible leaders might have hoped that whatever strategy they adopted would end with herd immunity as a side-effect of whatever tactics were adopted as part of their strategy.
Sadly, I don’t believe that our Government, and their equivalents in a number of other European Governments, let alone some of the world’s tyrannies, are weighing up the risks in a rational way. Nor do they seem capable of leading a responsible public debate on this sort of subject. The result will be catastrophic for our economy, our society, and ultimately, when the economic carnage corrodes the tax base, calamitous for the NHS and the public services. Give us grown-up Government, honest information and a route out of this mess.