A Sicilian Santa

Today’s Xmas ornament was bought when I visited Sicily, I liked the design and the differently coloured clothing. There was heavy rain this morning, so I did some sorting and tidying - one of my aims for this winter is to go through all the cupboards / drawers as **** has definitely expanded to fill the space available! This afternoon I watched a couple of films on Now as it looked so soggy out. Nice to hear the geese returning to roost at a later 4pm today. 

Day 652 / Day 19 of Plan B (for my record only)
117,093 new cases were reported in England today, a new pandemic record. 12,378 for 25th & 26th combined reported today for Wales, and a provisional 9,360 cases for Scotland. The number of people in hospital in England with Covid is up 38% in a week to 9,546 - unfortunately the categorisation of these cases is not broken down between those in hospital due to Covid and the so called ‘incidental’ cases of normal hospital admissions who are found to have Covid, but that is not the reason for their admission. The weekly jump in hospital cases in London was 59%. Modelling suggests at a worst case, as many as 40% of NHS staff could be off sick, with some organisations already seeing a 25% sickness level. The US has introduced a new isolation policy whereby those testing positive without symptoms can leave isolation after 5 days from 10 days (without a negative LFT). Unsurprisingly some experts have criticised this as reckless, as common sense also suggests, but worryingly it’s said it was needed to prevent the collapse of critical infrastructure.