Charismatic

Good news, testing may be about to get far more accurate with fewer false positives.

The BMJ recently reported issues with testing in the UK which got me interested in developments within testing. It appears that some testing protocol was based on an early paper published without review in Eurosurveillance and endorsed by the WHO, however upon review it appears that there have been several issues with the testing that has been elevating false-positives. This may also explain some of the seasonal patterns and odd occurances, like people testing positive again after recovering, as the genetic sequences used may not have been specific enough to differentiate between Covid-19 and other common viruses.

Hopefully this prompts all laboratories doing this type of testing to review their processes to make sure they are in line with best practices and health boards to make sure contracts are only allocated to laboratories with processes that take into account this new information.

Mishclark

Well Sydney is in a little but of a mess now! I'm not in Sydney but am hour and a half north on the Central coast.

I would have been flying over here for Christmas with my daughter anyway.
Oh well, Christchurch isn't going anywhere and I have plenty of gin and wine..

Pom_Chch

This is what worries me about an Oz/Nz bubble without quarantine and before a vaccine 😬

Mishclark

Yes, I think March is pushing it to be honest. I was waiting for the bubble to return to Nz as I could have gone back a while ago being a resident and a health care worker, but I wanted to wait as i like to be able to go back and forth over the Tasman if my daughter needs me in Oz or to visit. I suspect I'll be vaccinated before this happens.

I've been fortunate, the worse that has happened is me giving up my rental in nz. Such is life.

I do miss Christchurch and my friends though, that's how I know it's home!

chocolate cake

Likely to prove from a failure of the border control procedure like the earlier Melbourne and Auckland June/August outbreaks, and could equally have been Auckland/Christchurch just now. T
The buried health report indicating known failures, produced in September but only released here on Friday would suggest the earlier outbreak hardily unexpected.

Charismatic

Very sad to hear what is going on in the UK with a new, tough lockdown in place and countries closing their borders due to the new variation of the virus being detected.

On a positive note the UK does have about 4 millions doses of vaccine available (which is actually about 6 million due to the volume of vials being larger than advertised), and 8 million more to come in January, but they have only managed to deploy about 330,000 over the last 10 days which suggests they where not really ready to hit the ground running with their vaccination program despite what government was saying. When you think about the logistics for the UK based on its population size they probably need to exceed two million a week to ensure full annual coverage.

New Zealand and other countries should take notes here for when our orders arrive.

Charismatic

Israel is setting the Gold standard with its vaccine rollout at the moment, we should be taking notes:
​​​​​"By the end of this week, the country of 9 million is expected to have injected more than 10% of its population with vaccines...

...Having ramped up to a 24/7 operation, health providers are administering the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at a rate of 150,000 people a day – almost 2% of the population."​​

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...cination-drive

​​​​​Hopefully they can keep vaccine supplies rolling to finish the job. Wouldn't it be impressive if they got to a point where they are back to business as usual within a couple of months?

BEVS

Give it a rest. You are coming across as very ungrateful for the safety this country's people has and is currently enjoying due to this govts covid policies , whilst many other countries are suffering due to real and fatal govt policy failures.

Charismatic

Prepare for a wave of Skype calls from your friends in the UK looking to burn time, they are back in lockdown as Coronavirus is far out-running the rate of vaccination.

BEVS

I know. Absolutely dreadful mishandling & bungling from the UK Govt from the outset. No backbone at all from the namby pamby wassocks . Now the nation has to endure a further drawn out sort of lockdown & that is complete and utter pants.

Charismatic

To be fair the new variant seems to have moved the goalposts on what needs to be achieved but thay doesn't excuse slow decisions (e.g. delaying closing schools when it was absolutely clear to everyone that would happen) or that, as the first country to approve a vaccine, they haven't even managed to give a million the first shot in the first month.

Current numbers: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

LittleGreyCat

Never mind, we are assured that everyone who needs it will be vaccinated by mid February.
BoJo says so.
It must be true.

Charismatic

I think Boris derives a sadistic pleasure from letting people down. Christmas, avoiding a second wave, Covid-19 testing, the Brexit deal, acknowledging the existence of his children...

It's that same thing President Trump has of over promising and under delivering.

Justcol

On the plus side, things are so bad in blighty my son is contemplating a move to OZ.
It might not be NZ but the same hemisphere would be nice

Mishclark

Definitely! And once they have the eventual trans tasman bubble/borders open, so easy to see each other.