A Patch of Blue Sky

Nice to see some blue sky on my walk with G this morning. I have never seen so many people out for a New Year's Day walk as we saw this morning and we started at 10am - not many New Year's Eve revelers round here I guess. It was great to see so many out walking, cycling and running. We did a 4 mile walk round a cycle route at a National Trust property (mountain bike suitable only) which meant the route was relatively mud free and not slippy - yay!  It was so nice to walk at a normal pace, looking ahead rather than down to find suitable places to step in the mud. I was really warm by the end of the walk - max temp on New Year's day of an astonishing 14.5C in my garden and the warmest day on record in the UK with 16.2C recorded in London. Not really a photo opportunity walk, but the clouds at the car park looked great. 

Day 656 / Day 23 of Plan B (for my record only)
162,572 new cases reported today for England - a new record (no data for Scotland, Wales or NI). There were 2,370 Covid hospital admissions in England on 29th, up 90% on a week earlier. Great to see knighthoods for the CMO and deputy CMO for England (Prof Chris Whitty and Prof Jonathan Van-Tam) and the CMOs for Wales (Dr Frank Atherton) and Scotland (Dr Gregor Smith); and damehoods for Dr Jenny Harries (Chief Exec of the UKHSA and former deputy CMO for England) and Dr June Raine (Chief Exec of the MHRA). Also good to see the CSA Sir Patrick Vallance being made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. Great to see them all rewarded for their hard work and having to make extremely difficult and stressful decisions, in a context of having received online abuse from a small minority of the public and criticism from the far right of the Tory party. 19% of honours in the New Year list are for Covid-related service. A study by researchers in South Africa has suggested that the pattern of viral shedding with Omicron is different, with higher viral shedding in saliva rather than nasal, meaning that saliva swabs would be more accurate. The Health Secretary said today that it is 'inevitable that we will still see a big increase' in Covid patients over the next month.