Snow - Day 5

There was only a light dusting of snow overnight, so I only had to sweep the paths at the back of the house (very cold at -3C at 8 am after an extremely cold night). So instead I gave in to peer pressure and built a snowman, I think that's the first in half a century! The Sainsbury's van turned up this morning.......to deliver groceries to my neighbour. I did manage to get through to them by phone though and they've reinstated my order to deliver on Sunday evening. I enjoyed watching the tennis this morning and the excellent Mank this afternoon on Netflix (surely an Oscar contender, particularly for the cinematography). Look at the difference in weather nearly 2 years ago https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2546763767476128083

Day 332 / Day 37 of Lockdown 3 (for my record only)
UK deaths up 678 to 115,529 (revised basis), with 13,494 new cases, 25,621 patients in hospital, 3,132 on ventilation and 1,842 new admissions. c13.5m have now received their first dose of the vaccine. To date, 242,307 patients in England had Covid-19, 101,956 of them were treated in January alone. The impact on other NHS work means that those waiting more than 52 weeks to start hospital treatment in England has risen to 224,205, it was 1,467 in Dec 19. In total, 4.52m were waiting to start treatment. The anti-inflammatory drug Tocilizumab, used for rheumatoid arthritis, has been found to reduce hospital stays by up to 10 days and reduce the need for a mechanical ventilator when used alongside a steroid such as Dexamethasone. The weekly PHE surveillance report up to 7/2 shows that seroposivity (measuring antibodies) has risen from 4.1% in Dec to 9.7% in Jan in people aged 70-84, likely caused by increased transmission and vaccinations. The quarantine hotel booking system went live this afternoon, then went down due to technical reasons. The South African variant has now been found in a Stafford borough. The UK variant now accounts for 25% of infections in France and a study shows the South African and Brazilian variants account for 4-5% of new cases in France. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention reports that using a cloth mask over a medical mask could reduce the wearer's exposure to virus-sized particles by upwards of 90%. If two people both double mask, the risk of virus transfer from one to the other was reduced by 96.4%. It's thought this is because of both the layers and sealing gaps. Royal Mail has retained 10k temp staff from xmas to help deal with the raised volume of parcels during the pandemic.