Covid-19 Daily Bulletin

13 Nov

13 November 2020

A series of daily updates for CHO members regarding relevant updates pertaining to Coronavirus from home and abroad.

Key Announcements:

  • The latest R number is estimated at 1.1 to 1.3 with a daily infection growth rate range of +2 percent to +4 percent. Yesterday, there were 378 deaths.
  • Boris Johnson has announced plans for people across the UK to be able to spend Christmas with their extended families, while conceding that the government’s test-and-trace system “hasn’t had as much impact as we would have wanted” in reducing the spread of coronavirus.
  • A rapid coronavirus test at the heart of Boris Johnson’s mass-testing strategy missed more than 50 per cent of positive cases in an Operation Moonshot pilot in Greater Manchester.
  • Denmark has been taken off the UK’s coronavirus travel corridor list, the transport secretary has said. Passengers arriving in the UK from 04:00 GMT on Friday will need to self-isolate for 14 days.

Regional/Devolved

  • The government must scrap plans to deport foreign rough sleepers and relaunch the “everyone in” strategy to protect thousands of homeless people from the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, charities and the mayor of London have said.
  • People should limit themselves to seeing the same one or two friends or family after 9 November, the Welsh Government has said. Advice on the Covid-19 rules that begin after the firebreak in Wales urges people to be “restrained”.
  • The Scottish government has said it still does not know whether the full furlough scheme will be available to Scotland once lockdown ends in England at the start of next month.
  • Interventions to tackle Covid-19 “have not achieved enough” at this point to ensure more restrictions are not required in NI, Sinn Féin’s junior minister has said. Restrictions on hospitality and close-contact services are due to end on Friday, 13 November.

International

  • More than half of all Spain’s Covid deaths happened in the country’s care homes during the beginning of March and the end of June, according to a government report seen by El País.
  • Greece will go back into lockdown from Saturday for three weeks to battle a second wave of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced.
  • The United States has again recorded more cases in 24 hours than any country over the course of the pandemic, with 120,000 infections confirmed on Thursday 5 November according to Johns Hopkins University .

Stakeholders

  • On Thursday, US giant General Motors reported a 72 per cent increase in third-quarter profit as it cited strong recoveries in the US and China.
  • Uber Technologies Inc said on Thursday that demand for its food-delivery service exploded in the latest quarter, but recovery in its global rides business is being held back by its most important market, the United States, Reuters reports.

Unconfirmed reports

  • Ireland is on track to get its second wave of Covid-19 infections under control by the end of November when the government hopes to ease some of the strictest restrictions in Europe, a senior public health official said.