Sainsbury's Delivery

My thanks to Andy from Sainsbury's who delivered my weekly groceries today and kindly agreed to me taking his photo. I had my blood test first thing, carried out by a nurse in a plastic apron, gloves and a face mask, but surprisingly without the windows open letting fresh air in. I also had my temperature taken before entering the surgery, but was interested to hear Dr Jenny Harries at the daily briefing say that a third of people with the virus don't have a temperature. A beautiful day today and I did some gardening this morning and sat reading in the garden this afternoon. 

Day 53 / Day 45 of Full Lockdown (for my record only)
UK deaths up 539 to 30,615, Italy up 274 to 29,958, Spain up 213 to 26,070. In the US, 33M have lost their jobs since mid-March.

Testing didn't meet target levels for the 5th day in a row, critical to being able to come out of lockdown. Scotland has extended the lockdown, Boris to speak to the nation at 7pm on Sun and is now talking 'maximum caution' and very limited changes. Different figures quoted for the R rate at the briefing and at a Scientific Select Committee, unclear if going down or up. The ONS has said that black men and women are twice and likely to die from the virus than white, and the risk for other BAME categories are raised too - reasons are not yet known. Bank of England says this will be the sharpest recession on record (economy shrinking 14% this year), but the bounce back will be relatively quick. The 3 year old report from Exercise Cygnus on pandemic planning has been leaked, it warned that plans were not sufficient, that contingencies would not be able to cope and expressed concerns about the social care system - shame on the government for not acting on this.