
From Legerwood:
I am a bit puzzled by the numbers quoted as having been discharged in March. I have seen them quoted elsewhere too. Public Health Scotland collects data on the monthly numbers of delayed Discharges and the reports are published on the ISD Scotland web site. According to their Feb 2020 report there were 1627 patients delayed in hospital at the census point which is the last thursday in the month. The March 2020 report stated there were 1171 delayed patients at the census points. That is 456 patients discharged.
Apparently Health and Social Care also count delayed discharges. Double accounting?
ED: There is of course no evidence that these transferred patients caused the spread of disease in the homes nor that they were themselves infected there: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2020/05/25/heralds-tom-gordon-has-become-a-parody-in-effort-to-blame-first-minister-for-care-home-deaths/
The first case of Covid19 in Scotland was confirmed on 1st March. It was the 16th March before every health board in Scotland bar Orkney and Western Isles had any cases. The number of confirmed cases at that point was 171. Therefore patients being discharged into care homes in the first half of the month had a very good chance of being discharged from hospitals that did not have any, or very few, Covid patients. In some ways you can see why the advice might have been not to test.
Furthermore on 12th March the test and trace was abandoned and only hospital patients with suspected Covid were to be tested. This may have been decided because PHE were having trouble supplying enough test kits. The test was one developed in the UK. It was in use by PHE from the off but Scotland was not provided with supplies of the test until Feb 10th. Until then all samples had to go to a PHE lab in London and even after tests were carried out in Scotland, at GRI and ERI labs, any positive results had to be sent to the PHE lab for confirmation.
Apart from the problems with supply of the test kits, and swabs for sampling, the test itself was not very accurate. About 70% – 75% accuracy. Around April 21-23rd labs were instructed to change to commercial tests which were much more accurate.
So a complex picture with all sorts of layers and certainly not as straight forward as the opposition parties are trying to make out in their endless pursuit of SNP bad.
Off topic but some covid-19 which looks at England separately from Scotland. It’s from 18th May so sorry if you covered it.
I somehow doubt this hit the front, middle or back pages.
https://voxeu.org/article/excess-mortality-england-european-outlier-covid-19-pandemic
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Sorry see stewartb wrote about it here.
Wasn’t sure ot was the same source
https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2020/05/24/is-it-making-the-news-yet-where-they-are-england-eclipses-european-countries-in-excess-mortality-scores/
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The plan of the britnat media and the britnat politicians has been to look back the way and not to the future.
Their plan has been to look back at what happened
What preparations had been made
Then look for gaps
If there are none or none sufficiently wide to criticise
They make up their own mind about preparations using facts from the past
rather than the predictions of what could happen that the Scottish government had to use
Now NS has to repeat over and over that planning ahead is more difficult and less accurate than assessing the past
Why ?
Because the future is less predictable that the past
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On 2 April, the UK Government issued a directive to Care Homes: they must accept patients from hospital who have not been tested AND patients who tested positive for Covid-19.
Public Health England & the Care Quality Commission signed up to the advice.
It’s here at about 06:30 –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000j81c
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Some more on testing
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-coronavirus-testing
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And more on testing
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/10/uk-sends-coronavirus-samples-to-us-for-testing
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Yet more
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/revealed-design-flaw-leaves-coronavirus-test-swabs-long-fit/
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This is O/ T Dominic Cummings edited his blog to insert some words on Coronavirus on April 14th 2020 not last year as he said yesterday. Faisal Islam got his blog run through The Way Back Machine .
I’m off to run my self through it right now.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18474584.dominic-cummings-added-coronavirus-quote-blog-april/
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