Covid-19 Daily Bulletin

16 April 2021

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

Key Announcements:

• The number of people who tested positive for the virus yesterday was 2,672 and 30 people died having tested positive within 28 days.
• In total, 32,444,439 people have received their first vaccine dose in the UK and 8,513,864 people have received their second dose.
• Rapid Covid testing in England may be scaled back over false positives, with senior government officials estimating that as few as 2-10 percent of positive results may be accurate in places with low Covid rates.
• A Covid variant first detected in India, which has “potentially worrying variations”, has been found in the UK.
• The CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, has said it is “likely” that people will need a third covid vaccine dose within a year.
• Universities Minister Michelle Donelan has said the timing for higher education students to return to face-to-face teaching was a “cautious approach to the easing of restrictions”.

Devolved

• New rules on travel and meeting people outdoors have come into force in Scotland today as restrictions are eased. People can now travel out of their local area for non-essential reasons and six people from up to six households can meet outdoors.
• More than half of people in their 40s have now been given their first dose of the Covid vaccine in Wales.
• Outdoor hospitality businesses in Northern Ireland will be allowed to open on 30 April.

International

• Denmark advanced its reopening plan on the back of stable infection rates, allowing indoor serving at restaurants/ bars and some football fans to cheer from the stands from 21 April, weeks earlier than originally planned.
• A leading Israeli doctor believes the country may be close to reaching “herd immunity”.
• More than 16,000 expired AstraZeneca Covid-19 doses are to be destroyed in Malawi as concerns over vaccine hesitancy increase.

Stakeholders

• Research conducted by the TUC has found that workers in insecure jobs are twice as likely to die of Covid.
• Commenting on the latest NHS hospital performance statistics, David Maguire , Senior Analyst at The King’s Fund, said: “Today’s figures paint a bleak picture of the challenges facing the English health service in the wake of Covid-19. As NHS staff have battled the pandemic, waiting times for routine care have increased. Nearly one in 12 people on NHS waiting lists have now been waiting more than a year for care. Even if the NHS meets its challenging targets to increase activity in hospitals, waiting times for care will continue to rise for many months to come.”