Really hard listening to World At One #wato the mother of a teenage girl who developed anorexia during lockdown, was admitted to hospital spring 2021 where, due to covid, she spent 8 weeks in a hospital bed with no visitors and her condition worsened. So shocking
There will be hundreds if not thousands of stories like this. Her mother said she started extreme exercising because, when everything else was taken away due to lockdown, it was the only thing she could control
If I were @BorisJohnson@sajidjavid@RishiSunak I would spend hundreds of millions on child's mental health, right now. Otherwise it will cost the NHS billions in dealing with their problems in future years.
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The government's daily dashboard will no longer be updated at weekends from this week as part of plans to "live with the virus" @theipaperinews.co.uk/news/politics/…
This is major news for dashboard fans like myself. I interviewed covid dashboard heroes @statsgeekclare and @Pouriaaa a year ago about what exactly goes into the daily update. Pouria said at the time, it will be there for as long as it is needed: inews.co.uk/news/politics/…
This is correct. The reality is more time/analysis is needed. Senior U.K. health official last week: most cases are 20-40 age group because they’re the most mobile/active in a population. Variant only around a couple of weeks, so cases won’t be going to hospital yet anyway.
Maybe Omicron causes less severe illness, maybe not. Nobody knows for sure yet and anyone claiming they know differently is wrong. This is why govts are taking precautions until they have more evidence
The two Omicron cases in Nottingham and Chelmsford were identified due to overnight sequencing, Dept of Health says.
It’s worth saying the U.K. capacity to sequence Covid genomes - which spot the variants - is world class AND Omicron has a feature which makes it easy to spot in this sequencing. So it’s a concern but our scientists and public health experts are *on it*
It’s also worth saying there are hundreds of people working in public health/virology/Govt through the night and over this weekend to search for and contain Omicron, so a massive thank you to all of them
Just going back to all my tweets from April raising concerns about the Indian variant, as Delta was called then, and all the people - including some experts! - who berated me for scare-mongering or “not understanding” the virus
I see some of those “expert” tweets have been deleted. Anyway, this is not about I told you so, this is to say that I spend every day, often into the evening, contacting virologists/epidemiologists/other scientists/Whitehall officials about Covid and I don’t scaremonger
I hope I report things accurately and fairly, based on what experts are saying. I’m not perfect but it is exhausting to go through the same thing this week, be the first journalist to report on Nu/B.1.1.529 and to be yet again berated for even reporting on it
NEW on Nu: UK medical experts are meeting to discuss whether South Africa should face travel restrictions given the very rapid developments on B.1.1.529, as first reported by @theipaper yesterday inews.co.uk/news/politics/…
Cases in South Africa are nearing 100, but experts there say there'll be "many more" tomorrow. The WHO's advisory group on variants is holding urgent talks, also Fri, on whether to designate it variant of interest or of concern with the potential label Nu inews.co.uk/news/politics/…
Since the 32-mutation variant was first flagged by @PeacockFlu on Tuesday, international efforts have moved rapidly to assess it: whether it's causing rising cases in SA, whether it can evade vaccines. This is how @theipaper broke the story yesterday: inews.co.uk/news/politics/…