These are the coronavirus morning headlines for Wednesday, January 27, as plans for hotel quarantine for select travellers are reportedly being drawn up by the UK Government.
Boris Johnson has reportedly decided against a blanket hotel quarantine plan for the UK, reports The Mirror.
But plans for hotel quarantine measures are said to be in the making for travellers returning to the UK from countries with “new, more virulent” forms of coronavirus.
That includes Portugal, South Africa and Brazil among others.
According to government sources, the limited system of hotel quarantine will be introduced in England this week, with the government “reserving the right” to go further by requiring all visitors from anywhere in the world to isolate for 10 days at their own expense.
Almost a year to the day after Britain’s first Covid case, the Government will finally agree measures that could keep out mutant strains of the disease.
Yet the move could be a massive blow to the travel industry and will throw the summer holidays of millions of Brits into doubt.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said the Government “will not hesitate to take further action” to protect from more strains arriving.
Cabinet ‘hawks’ were last night pushing a plan to impose the quarantine restrictions on almost all people arriving in the UK.
Others in the Cabinet only want to hit Brits returning from countries with a new variant – such as Brazil and South Africa.
Travel from those countries is already banned completely for non-Brits, but Brits are allowed to return home.
Drug becomes ‘backbone’ of hospital treatment of patients with Covid-19
Dexamethasone has become the “backbone” of the hospital treatment of patients with Covid-19, a senior medic said.
The cheap steroid was found to reduce death rates by up to a third among some hospital patients.
The University of Oxford-led clinical trial was hailed as “the world’s first coronavirus treatment proven to reduce the risk of death”, after the team reported its trial results in June last year.
The treatment was immediately rolled out across NHS hospitals.
And this treatment, along with others, could be behind the significant reduction in death rates among those admitted to intensive care units since the start of the pandemic.
The Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre examined information on Covid-19 patients from England, Wales and Northern Ireland admitted to intensive care up to August 31 and those admitted from September 1.
The data released in October shows that on average, 39% of critical care coronavirus patients died up until the end of August, with just less than 12% dying since.
Research continues and breakthroughs are still occurring which could change the way patients are treated, and improve survival rates further still.
Under the plans, expected to be confirmed to MPs today, travellers into the UK from Covid hotspots will have to quarantine in guarded hotels for 10 days.
They are set to have to pay for their own stay – which could cost north of £1,000 – making foreign travel impossible for millions of people.
And they will be banned from leaving their rooms or mixing with other guests until they have been given the all-clear to leave.
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Covid-19 was widespread in the UK much earlier than thought
The coronavirus outbreak across the UK may have begun much earlier than previously thought, according to experts.
When the first two Covid-19 cases were confirmed in the UK on January 31 2020, it was thought at that time the risk of onward transmission was very low.
Two Chinese nationals who had recently arrived were staying in a hotel in York when one of them fell ill and was taken to hospital.
Both later tested positive for coronavirus.
At that time, the UK’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said the UK had been preparing for cases of novel coronavirus and “we have robust infection control measures in place to respond immediately”.
But soon, community transmission began to take hold and the UK’s first coronavirus death was reported on March 5.
This timeline was moved further back after a coroner revealed in September that a UK patient had died with Covid-19 in January 30.
The death of 84-year-old Peter Attwood at a hospital in Kent was attributed to Covid-19 after coronavirus was found in his lungs, making him the first person in the UK to die of the disease.
Meanwhile, a coronavirus tracking app designed by scientists at King’s College London, also hinted at sustained community transmission of coronavirus in the UK as early as December.
This is much earlier than the first confirmed case of transmission inside the UK, which was registered on February 28 in Surrey.
Doctors make case for kids to go back to school as soon as possible
Doctors from Wales and across the UK are warning of the catastrophic effects of continued school closure and lockdown restrictions on children.
In an increasingly polarised debate about school closures in the pandemic experts agree on one thing – the lasting effect on the attainment of children and teenagers, mostly those from already disadvantaged or disengaged families.
On top of that there are concerns about child protection and the mental health of a generation of children stuck at home unable to meet friends in or outside school. A raft of reports has warned of the multiple effects of classroom closures and lockdown on young people.
Classrooms are shut to all but some vulnerable and key workers’ children and most pupils have returned to remote learning.
The Welsh Government is due to announce the first three weekly review of the latest lockdown restrictions on Friday (Jan 29), including whether schools should re-open next month.
Dr Sarah Lewis and Dr Roland Salmon are among those alarmed about the effect of ongoing school closures on children and teenagers.
They said a more balanced approach is needed in Wales and across the UK to get them back into the classroom.
Dr Lewis, from Monmouthshire, is professor of molecular epidemiology at Bristol University. She has been tracking the effects of school closures since March.
Dr Salmon is a former director of communicable diseases at Public Health Wales.
Both stress they are not denying risks of Covid, but they feel judgements need to be made about the possibility of young lives ruined if schools remain shut.
They point to research highlighting the widening attainment gap and effect on mental health of remote learning and said more measures could be put in places to keep staff safe.
Elderly people queue in close to freezing conditions for coronavirus vaccine
Health chiefs are considering installing shelters after long queues at one of the main mass vaccination centres in Swansea.
One queue was captured on camera and showed people lined up in the darkness and in temperatures close to freezing at the Bay Field Hospital in Fabian Way.
That queue followed a medical emergency involving someone who had been on their way to the testing centre, who sadly later died.
But Swansea Bay University Health Board has said it is looking at action to deal with people having to wait outside the hospital for their turn.
Dorothy Edwards, Covid-19 vaccination programme director for the health board, said: “We can confirm that due to a very sad incident at the Bay Field Hospital Mass Vaccination Centre on Friday, some people faced a wait for vaccination.
“An individual had collapsed while en route to the centre. As they were nearby they were brought to the centre and staff, including a security guard and nurses, carried out CPR. Paramedics arrived quickly and took the individual to hospital. Unfortunately they did not survive.
“All staff at the centre, including our military colleagues, did all they could to manage the situation with dignity and respect.”
Wales’ deadliest week of pandemic so far
The number of Covid-19 deaths registered each week in Wales has continued to outnumber that of the week before, making the second week of January the deadliest of the pandemic.
Last week, we reported that the first week of January was the most deadly since the pandemic began in March 2020, as 454 deaths involving Covid -19 were registered.
The following week ending January 15 saw 467 deaths involving Covid-19 registered in Wales, making it the most deadly week since the pandemic began.
New data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that the second wave of the pandemic is recording more Covid-19 deaths than the first.
Meanwhile, the Wales-wide coronavirus infection rate is continuing to fall.
There have only been two other weeks where the figure has reached more than 400.
On the week ending April 24 last year there were 413 deaths registered as involving Covid-19 in Wales while the week before that there were 409 deaths registered involving Covid-19.
-- to www.walesonline.co.uk
