Scotland’s massive achievement ignored as cases and deaths fall toward zero in one month

https://www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/

On the 8th of June, the 7 day average for the number of new cases was 31.6 and for deaths it was 7.4.

Yesterday, only one month later, the 7 day average for the number of new cases was 7.1 and for deaths was 0.6.

In the last three days, the average number of new cases has fallen again to only 4 suggesting that, all going well, zero is possible soon.

This is a stunning achievement, newsworthy you’d think, and credit in large part to the First Minister, the Health Secretary and their team, in keeping the message clear and consistent and refusing to be told what to do by those balloons not running things, in Westminster.

Has any other country, after being initially hamstrung by a misguided collective ‘strategy’, achieved so much?

19 thoughts on “Scotland’s massive achievement ignored as cases and deaths fall toward zero in one month”

  1. This should be headline news. Instead our media platforms the likes of Barrhead Travel bleating about denial of travel to Spain for a couple of weeks . I dont know anyone who rates a beach holiday worth risking their life and health.

    Liked by 6 people

    Reply

    2. Apologies for the mess up over the missing link. If you are interested in reading what the Leicester mayor thinks about data provided and not provided it can be accessed here.

      https://twitter.com/Dr_D_Robertson?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

      Manchester paper also covers it.

      https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/how-government-blindfolded-frontline-public-18566511.amp?__twitter_impression=true

      Like

      Reply

  4. The next few weeks are going to show an even bigger gap between Scotland and England as the effects of their premature lifting of restrictions kicks in.
    Then,maybe England will be on our list of quarantine countries as well.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      1. ‘I’d say the UK Gov needs to get a grip, but they don’t seem to have any clue how to.’
        I would say, they don’t even want to.
        They may even have a plan to privatise more if not all of the NHS.
        Scare people into going private.
        Abt 11min into this
        https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2020/7/july/boris-johnson-should-look-in-the-mirror-before-blaming-care-homes-professor-john-ashton
        We mustn’t confuse Johnson’s stupidity with his team’s (Cummings?) ability to connive.
        Scotland has to really wake up to the fact that he is not playing by any rules.

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply

  6. Sky News has more on the chaotic nature of testing in England and the unreliability of data. This sits along with what the mayors of Leicester and Manchester have been complaining about.

    https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-the-inside-story-of-how-uks-chaotic-testing-regime-broke-all-the-rules-12022566

    “According to multiple sources, the data collection was carried out in such a chaotic manner that we may never know for sure how many people have been tested for coronavirus.

    “We completely buffed the system,” says a senior Whitehall figure.

    “We said: forget the conventions, we’re putting [this data] out.”

    Sky News has learned that in the early days of mass COVID-19 testing, the statistical problems were so deep that one minister sat at their desk with Excel spreadsheets in front of them, calling round to try to collect data to use in each daily press conference.

    Even as Health Secretary Matt Hancock struggled to get the number of tests carried out up to 100,000 a day by the end of April, the collection of those testing statistics was still so primitive that they were being compiled with pen and paper.”

    Like

    Reply

  7. Scotland’s achievement not ignored by the BMJ

    https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/06/30/devi-sridhar-and-adriel-chen-scotlands-slow-and-steady-approach-to-covid-19-may-lead-to-a-more-sustainable-future/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_term=hootsuite&utm_content=sme&utm_campaign=usage

    “In April 2020, the Scottish government issued a framework for decision-making on covid-19 which notably included that there would be no acceptable number of covid-19 cases, and that no one would be intentionally exposed to this virus. This framework set the objective clearly: to drive the number of cases as close to zero as possible, and from that, a strategy and game plan could be worked out to arrive at the outcome.

    For the past two weeks in June, Scotland has consistently had a decreasing number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths from covid-19, leading to a continued push for a “Zero covid” Scotland (See Figures 1-3). In addition, the positivity rate—the number of people testing positive out of the total number of people tested—has fallen to under 0.5% most days. As Scotland has a land border with England, and is part of a global world, this does not mean elimination with no cases ever. It does, however, mean working towards ending community transmission and local cases, and moving towards a future where the main risk of covid-19 is from imported cases. These need to be quickly identified, traced, and all individuals quarantined. An elimination strategy is optimal for public health, the economy, and society, as it allows maximum normality as lockdown eases, and avoids the halfway house that results from a high level of virus transmission and circulation. “

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  8. What’s going on in England ? on the face of it, this is very good news.The cases per 100,000 are mostly quite low, some much better than those in Scotland overall. More schools look to be affected.

    https://twitter.com/Dr_D_Robertson?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

    “Dr Duncan Robertson@Dr_D_Robertson
    2h
    This covers data from 29 June and 5 July 2020. 3300 cases were detected in this week compared to 4400 the previous week. ‘Case detections are highest in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and Humber’

    ‘At a local authority level, activity remains highest in Leicester, though the weekly incidence of confirmed cases has declined’

    ‘The number of incidents in educational settings has increased from 43 in week 26 to 55 in week 27′

    Remember, the German threshold for ’emergency brake’ is 50 cases per 100,000 so on this metric, only Leicester would meet this criterion for today’s data release

    177 new acute respiratory infections were detected in this week’s data release: 48 from care homes, 9 from hospitals, 55 from educational settings, 1 from a prison, 41 from workplaces, and 28 from other settings

    Here are the cases per 100,000 people in Greater London (the German threshold for ’emergency brake’ is 50): Hillingdon at 8.2, Ealing at 5.0. No cases reported in City of London

    Like

    Reply

  9. This does not look so good.

    Anthony Costello@globalhlthtwit
    8 Jul
    ‘We have revised last week’s estimate of the number of infections arising each day across England from 3,000 (1,500–5,800, 95% credible interval) to 5,300 (3,500–7,600, 95% credible interval).’ MRC Cambridge

    Julie Wassmer
    @juliewassmer
    · 8 Jul
    The #COVID19 R rate seems to have recently jumped upward significantly according to the Cambridge University who are advising SAGE. Why isn’t this being reported?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a reply to anandprasad Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.