By Andrew Allison, Head of Campaigns
I am sure that you, like me, are not content with the new normal and want the old normal back. It is becoming increasingly obvious that Covid-19 has mutated and is not as deadly as it was at the beginning of the year. Here are the latest statistics published by the Government at 4.00 pm yesterday:
To put those figures into context, there are 1,257 NHS hospitals in the UK. As you can see, there are currently 767 patients with Covid-19 in hospital. There are now many hospitals without a single Covid case. There are 64 patients seriously ill in ventilator beds, and sadly 12 people died the previous day. But, and it is an important but, those 12 people died within 28 days of a positive test. That doesn't mean that they died from Covid-19. It means that they could have died with Covid-19. That is an important distinction.
If you don't look at the data each day as I do, I urge you to do so. You will see that a tiny percentage of those testing positive for Covid suffer from severe symptoms and require mechanical ventilation. And, as I have already said, out of those who die, we don't know whether or not they were going to die anyway because of underlying health conditions.
It really is time for all of us who are fit and healthy to get back to normal, go to our place of work, and get the economy growing again.