Opinions on how the Government have handled the coronavirus outbreak

[savvypaul]

If catching it, and recovering from it, does not give immunity, then we are in for a pretty rough year or two until a vaccine can be implemented.

https://www.france24.com/en/20200425-no ... y-who-says

Still early days...fingers crossed

[Lurcher300b]

fingers crossed

I am reasonably confidant that that will not affect the outcome.

[Daniel Quinn]

I've heard it's tory party policy along with clapping thursday

[savvypaul]

As futile gestures go, I prefer it to drinking pints of dettol and sticking a UV prong up me jacksie...

[slinger]

The Government has said it may not have the full data on whether it has hit its coronavirus testing target ready until next week.
The Prime Minister's official spokesman said on Monday that it will be "difficult" to know whether the Government has hit its target of 100,000 tests a day on Thursday – the day by which it is meant to be reached.
STORY

S'funny. Doesn't usually take 'em that long to make shit up.

[NSNO2021]

Here's an educated guess, they are no where close, in fact I would be surprised and to some degree suspicious if they said they had reached 50k a day. Here's another guess they won't reveal the figure until they have some "good" news to offset their failure. The release of the numbers and how it's said will be completely under Dominic Cummings control.

[savvypaul]

BBC News Article

The government failed to buy crucial protective equipment to cope with a pandemic, a BBC investigation has found.

There were no gowns, visors, swabs or body bags in the government's pandemic stockpile when Covid-19 reached the UK.

NHS staff say they are being put at risk because of the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE).

The government said it has taken the right steps and is doing everything it can to increase stocks.

The investigation by BBC Panorama found that vital items were left out of the stockpile when it was set up in 2009 and that the government subsequently ignored a warning from its own advisers to buy missing equipment.

The expert committee that advises the government on pandemics, the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), recommended the purchase of gowns last June.

Gowns are currently one of the items in shortest supply in the UK and they are now difficult to source because of the global shortage of PPE.

Doctors and nurses have complained that there are also shortages of the life-saving FFP3 respirator masks.

Panorama has discovered that millions of FFP3 respirator masks are unaccounted for.

There were 33 million on the original 2009 procurement list for the stockpile, but only 12 million have been handed out.

The government refuses to explain where the other masks have gone.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-52440641

[Daniel Quinn]

By far the funniest/sad thing, is they counted a pair gloves as 2 items, thereby instantly doubling the ppe they could lay claim to.

[slinger]

Just to complement Paul's post, above...

The government today admitted it sometimes counts a pair of gloves as "two gloves" in a row over statistics on vital PPE.

Downing Street said gloves are sometimes counted individually when the government boasts of the number of protective items it has sent to hospitals.

That would mean, in some cases, a figure of 100 gloves would only mean 50 actual pairs had been sent to the coronavirus front line.

Earlier this month, Health Secretary Matt Hancock claimed the number of items of PPE sent to the frontline had topped one billion.

However, a BBC Panorama documentary ran claims that gloves were sometimes counted individually, making the figure look bigger than it was.

Today No10 said gloves were sometimes counted individually - but not always.

"It’s not even that simple I'm afraid," the Prime Minister's official spokesman said.

"Gloves are counted differently depending on clinical settings.

"Sometimes they’re single, sometimes they’re pairs, and often they’re counted as fours in high-risk areas.

"It’s not correct to say they’re all counted individually - they’re counted in a number of different ways."

MORE

The phrase "slimy bastards" springs to mind.

Crossed post with DQ.

[Daniel Quinn]

The death rate for April 15th is the highest for over 5 years. So the virus is killing people who ordinarily would not have died. Statistically speaking.