29th October 2020
UK COVID Deaths – Daily 280 / Total 45,955
UK COVID Deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate - Total 58,925 (up to 16 Oct)
James Cook Hospital – Total COVID deaths – 285
All COVID cases within South Tees Hospitals Trust – 74
James Cook Critical Care COVID cases – 12 (6 ventilated)
A short post tonight as it’s the half-term holiday and I’m off work until next week. Once again, holiday plans have changed and we are staying at home. To be honest Nicky and I could have really done with getting away from it all for a bit. We are both tired and somewhat weary; we know that the situation isn’t getting better any time soon.
At the hospital, things continue to get steadily busier. We are seeing more patients on the wards, more patients on CPAP and more patients on ventilators. We are also aware that more patients are dying. We had not expected that things would be getting this bad this quickly. Don’t get me wrong, we are all more than able to cope with the current workload but are worried about how bad things might be, come Christmas. God only knows what surprises Santa will bring us this year.
Imperial College London’s REACT-1 random testing study has found that between 16th and 25th October, the number of infections doubled every 9 days. This increase is occurring within all age groups and throughout the country. They estimate that 128 people per 10,000 now have the virus which implies there are approximately 96,000 new infections every day.
Whether you use this figure, the Government’s daily case figure or anything in between, there can be no doubt that cases are steadily increasing. We are clearly not seeing the peak that we saw in March and April but current restrictions are failing to stop the situation worsening. It comes as no surprise that the rise in cases and hospital admissions across Teesside is fuelling a Government call for the area to move into the top level of restrictions.
Meanwhile, North Yorkshire where I live, remains in tier one, the lowest level. I am still allowed to meet up to five friends at the village pub which is what I’m planning to do tonight. Whilst we are allowed indoors, we will be drinking outside in the beer garden. However, looking at the rain outside, I’m not sure how fun a night it will be. It probably won’t be long before we’re back to those awful virtual pub nights on Zoom, with or without a lockdown.