The cumulative total of Covid cases in Orkney is now at 618 as 18 new positive tests were recorded in the Health Board area.
From 26th October to 1st November 2021 the positive cases recorded in Orkney were as follows:
- West Mainland: 13
- Stromness, Sandwick, Stenness: 17
- East Mainland: 20
- North Isles, Linked South Isles, Hoy, Flotta, Graemsay: 29
The stats published for Scotland on 4th November 2021 are as follows:
- 2,823 new cases of COVID-19 reported
- 43,649 new tests for COVID-19 that reported results
- 7.2% of these were positive
- 33 new reported death(s) of people who have tested positive
- 63 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
- 896 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
- 4,321,770* people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination and 3,911,823* have received their second dose
*Vaccination data for today is not yet available. We will update it as soon as possible.
How well have we done?
On the 4th of November 2020 the stats for Scotland were:
And here we are on 4th November 2021:
Since the start of the outbreak:
- 9,242 people have died who have tested positive as at 4 November
- 11,672 deaths have been registered in Scotland where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate up to 31 October
- 30% of COVID-19 registered deaths related to deaths in care homes, 63% were in hospitals and 7% were at home or non-institutional settings (as at 31 October)
People are reminded to:
- get the vaccine when you are offered it
- wear a face covering where required
- wash your hands regularly, and cover your nose and mouth if coughing or sneezing
- self isolate and take a PCR test if you have symptoms
- take regular tests if you don’t have symptoms to reduce the risk of spreading the virus
- meet outside if you can, and open windows when indoors
- keep your distance from people not in your group
- work from home, or do a mixture of home and office working if possible
- use the apps: COVID status (vaccine passport), Protect Scotland and Check-in Scotland
Categories: Uncategorized
Seems over the last year Orkney has faired the worst of all those in the tables shown.
We now have approx 20 times the number of cases we had last year – where as the other
communities have between 10 and 15 times last years number.
Not every community is present in the tables – so there might be worse.
Were we better behaved during the initial wave?
Have we been testing more on Orkney?
I don’t believe we were late in vaccination.
Good questions… some answer suggestions…
Orkney became complacent early on. Local authorities seemed to be more preoccupied about potential economic impacts of interventions than public health. Initially, there was no Delta variant. OIC and NHS Orkney were (and still are) putting their trust in measures which may have been enough to contain previous strains but are not appropriate to contain Delta. NHS Orkney has not even realised that symptoms of Delta can be very different. They failed to disseminate this information and continue to do so. NHS Orkney has not noticed that symptoms in children may even differ more… although it has been known for many months that children often just display gastro-intestinal sypmtoms but no signs of a respiratory infection. Also, children were clearly not the drivers before Delta, but appear now play an active role.
Instead of reasonable caution and advising peple of the risks of socialising, NHS Orkney more or less stood by and neglected to realise the slightly dampening seasonal effect (in laymens’ terms basically a combination of weather, behavioural and virus characteristics) which seemingly kept case numbers low. Extraordinarily low test rates led to the detection of just some of the cases. This was clearly misinterpreted and a critical mass could build up undetected over the summer. That most cases were mild(ish) was owed to multiple factors: seasonal, age groups (many older folk remained rather cautious) and relatively high vaccination rates.
NHS Orkney has recently increased testing, but one could assume that this was only because they had no other choice when there was evidence for wide spread community transmission.
From studies and observations conducted elsewhere, It was quite clear that case numbers would go up when immunity would begin to wane, when people would socialise and travel even more, when NPIs would be abandoned, when the weather would drive people indoors, schools be back and so forth.
Boosters will probably bring some relief but we don’t yet have enough evidence to make any claims about whether this will only temporarily boost or also prolong a degree of immunity.
Whilst this pandemic is far from over and the jury is still out, one could probably argue that island regions had a far easier job to control and contain the virus. A sensible and mandatory test regime for access to the isles would probably have prevented many cases and it would have become a simple but effective routine.
The will was not there, public health expertise was lacking… and so was common sense and a basic understanding of infection prevention & control measures.
Other remote island regions across the world often fared better than us…