Vocal Voices

It is the most ethnically diverse city in the UK and it has seen a spike in Covid cases of late. Those things mean that it could be forced to stay in the current lockdown for at least the next two weeks. It would be the first local lockdown of its size in the UK if that was to happen - a bit of an experiment.

You have to feel sorry for the residents, but if you were a planner looking for somewhere to exercise and test such a thing Leicester would probably be near the top of your list. It sits on its own well away from other urban areas. Most of its people live within a well defined ring-road, It has no airport of note, and it is not a main rail hub.

I can understand the city's mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, being angry, but there was always going to be a first. Hopefully it will be monitored carefully and with plenty of updates being given to businesses and the community. It will be easier to keep tabs on there than if it had been in one of those areas where cities bump up against one another such as W. Midlands, Greater Manchester or W. Yorkshire.

It has a huge Asian population does Leicester so I am not surprised given it was Eid a few weeks ago

I still wonder if there isn't a little bit of 'being made an example of' about this though

Given the recent data this is not a big surprise.

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh all fall into the top 10 for daily new cases. The UK has dropped to 21 now.

Added to that, 90% of all detected international entry cases have come from Pakistan.

In Leicester, the population is 30% Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin.

It will sort itself out eventually, but with new cases and deaths still falling, week on week, more "hotpots" will emerge.

It is now official. Leicester stays in lockdown with only essential travel out and in. It will be interesting to see if or how it can be enforced. It will also be interesting to see what happens to testing and tracing to try to define which wards in the city are being impacted most.

BTW, London, Birmingham and Bradford have bigger Asian (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) communities, by number, than anywhere else in the UK and Eid was celebrated in those places as well.

I am not totally convinced it is simply an ethnicity thing when there are so many other variables to consider. There will be other hot-spots that's for sure

In pure numbers, this is true. In % I haven't looked.

Leicester has always seemed more deprived than either London or Manchester and we know that diet and depravation play a part.

Then there is the fact that testing is now being highly focused. Witness the panic about Germany when testers descended on a meat packaging firm and found that over a thousand had been infected.

How many had symptoms? Well that isn't reported is it. How many would have been detected under peak testing? Very few I suspect.

What is the R0 rate in Germany today? Probably high on a day by day basis, they were down to 175 new cases and 3 deaths on Sunday but back up to 528 and 12 yesterday.

Germany has tested 5.4 million people and we have tested 9.2m. Testers are now flooding into Leicester guaranteeing that the number of "infections" will continue to rise.

Because of the new restrictions, Leicester will eventually burn itself out. Overall, the number will continue to fall and, because of it, hotspots will continue to erupt as focused testing reveals the true scope of the infections in any area of the UK.

It is like ants in your garden. The closer you look, the more you see, but when you start digging.....

It was apparently the same in Harrow in the early days of the outbreak. a high % of BAME and many houses of mutliple occupanncy with shared facilities.

The spikes at meat processing plants are an issue in this country as well - factories in Swansea, Anglesey, Wrexham, and Kirklees as well as Leicester have all recorded above-the-norm multiple positives.

The plant at Anglesey is operated by 2 Sisters so with that company's hygiene record, I can't say I'm overly surprised .....

This has put my daughter under a lot of pressure Ossie. The customers of that firm are all ringing up wanting covid reports.
Apparently meat processing plants are ideal breeding ground for covid, being cold and sunless.
And now I see Bradford's name has popped up on the list of possibles for a lockdown. No surprises there.
Also some eastern Europeans don't like social distancing. Sister in law's boyfriend has a flat in Wakefield. The girl who lives in the flat above is Polish and last week threw a big party. Loads of people there, all drunk, all loud, no social distancing whatsoever.
You can't cure idiocy.

I find it interesting that the categoric denial that there was any evidence that hot temperatures were inhospitable to the virus has turned into tacit acceptance that cold climates are breeding grounds.

It is always useful to remember the categoric ptotestations when things change. Especially as mea culpa appears to be totally absent from our medical "experts".

The number of new cases continues to fall, the number of tests continue to rise. At some point it is going to be pretty evident that going back to 14,000 new cases per day is quite unlikely with even a modicum of caution by the vulnerable.

There is plenty of medical research evidence that coronaviruses that affect the respiratory system, such as Covid - 19, SARS and some strains of the common cold, are not as viable in hot and humid climates yet are more viable in cooler temperatures with lower humidity - <20 ºC and 40-50% relative humidity (RH). It is a known 'known' and is why those of us in temperate zones have cold and flu seasons in autumn and winter. Abattoirs are in the cooler and lower RH 'zone' almost all year round.

The good news is that even though we are doing much more testing the UK's 14 day average for new cases is about 1,000 per day and that is much lower than the peak of 8,861 on April the 10th when testing was much more sporadic.