The cumulative total of Covid cases in Orkney now stands at 4,157. This sharp rise in the total is due to historic cases which are only now being added. These are positive LFD results from 6th of January 2022 to 10th March 2022.
For the first week of March – 1st to 7th – there were 532 positive Covid cases recorded in Orkney. The positivity rate was 2,375 per 100,000 of the population (the Scottish average over this period was 1,223.2
Across Orkney the cases recorded were as follows:
- West Mainland: 105
- Stromness, Sandwick, Stenness: 86
- East Mainland: 137
- Isles: 72
How are we doing?
| new cases Orkney | cumulative total Orkney | cumulative total Scotland | |
| 10.03.2020 | – | – | 27 |
| 10.03.2021 | 0 | 70 | 207,156 |
| 10.03.2022 | 65 | 4,157 | 1,561,034 |
The stats for Scotland published on 10th March 2022 are as follows:
- 14,387 new cases of COVID-19 reported.
- 41 new reported deaths of people who have tested positive
- 22 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
- 1,636 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
- 4,439,451 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, 4,165,704 have received their second dose, and 3,459,127 have received a third dose or booster
What can you do?
- get the vaccine or the vaccine booster
- take lateral flow tests twice a week, and if visiting someone vulnerable or going to a crowded place – get lateral flow tests
- follow the guidance on self-isolating and booking a test
- wear a face covering where required
- if mixing with others, try to gather in small groups only
- wash your hands regularly and cover your nose and mouth if coughing or sneezing
- open windows when meeting indoors
- a mixture of home and office working is allowed
- use the apps: COVID status, Protect Scotland and Check-in Scotland
Categories: Uncategorized
It won’t be long until it’s a quarter of the population.
WHY?
Please – put your mask on – keep your distance – show a bit of sense.
Don’t attend indoor gatherings of people not known to you.
It’s not that hard.
And…what IS happening with the cruise liners? Will those people actually WANT to visit one of the places with the highest numbers of Covid cases?
Maybe they don’t know.
If they do, and still come – they’re nuts.
PS
If you do meet up – test first. If you test positive – stay home. Never mind what the governments ‘advise’ – they’re nuts too.
It’s down to us, folks.
I hope that Cameron McNeish doesn’t mind me posting this here….
https://twitter.com/CameronMcNeish/status/1501944118368366604?cxt=HHwWmMCr_fmN_dcpAAAA
I shouldn’t imagine that he would.
I have followed the numbers assiduously for 2 years – they are now so near to meaningless that I’m about to give up. Except the case numbers appear to be rocketing. I’m not a youngster, far from it, so I am not confident I’ll get through it.
It seems the general population (including many people on Orkney) have let it rip and are willing to follow Bojo’s herd immunity non-strategy. Well I just hope that not only being top of the league – that we aren’t the place where a new variant emerges.
Why have +ve LFD tests been unrecorded for so long? – giving false indications.
Whose responsible for that? The never ending question with governments today..
Such high infection rates are an indicator of complacency. They should not happen. Everybody should have learned by now that there are simple and effective mitigation measures. Ironically, the UK has exported the same high grade masks it refuses to use in this country, to other countries (for example Germany, stats available at https://www.destatis.de/DE/Home/_inhalt.html). Perhaps this is the explanation for the use of “face-coverings” of limited effectiveness and even those are apparently too big an effort for some. Was it more lucrative to send proper masks to other countries with their own sizeable manufacturing capacity than to use it for the own population or was the latter simply deemed expendable? Or deemed to stroppy to wear them?
What is happening now, is a disgrace. Numbers are going up, not only in Orkney. Letting the virus roam freely means that the simple message that “many infections = many opportunities for mutations” has not been communicated appropriately. It does not matter whether most infections are mild. It does not matter if less people end up in ICU when at the same time many end up in other wards.
What matters is, that already high infection levels increase the risks for further mutations. What matters is, that already many hospitals experience pressure again. Check out staff briefings of several NHS trusts and health boards on youtube, there are many and all have the same message.
I am not providing links here because some may stop to make them publicly available.
What also matters is, that surveillance in animal populations, wild as well as domestic, is insufficient (WHO https://www.who.int/news/item/07-03-2022-joint-statement-on-the-prioritization-of-monitoring-sars-cov-2-infection-in-wildlife-and-preventing-the-formation-of-animal-reservoirs). What matters is, that it is a credible assumption that spillovers into animal populations may already have occurred and we will be the last to know.
Remote and island regions have an advantage. They can – in theory at least – far better than others exercise a safe public health management and appropriate infection prevention and control protocols. Other regions have fared better. Those regions were aware of their vulnerability and protected their limited resources. They also protected the functioning of their economy and services to a better degree.
In comparison, Orkney has thoroughly mismanaged the pandemic and continues to do so. What is happening now was therefore predictable. The excuse that one didn’t see it coming, is not credible. Not after two years of a pandemic.
Dangling the carrot of normality in front of the public’s nose was not going to work and it was premature. Keeping fingers crossed and hoping for a miracle, underestimates virus evolution.
Normality – for the time being – must include mask wearing in all shared indoor spaces, workplaces, offices, religious gatherings and so forth.
We can now only hope for some kind of dampening seasonal effect to slowly creep in. Surely, this is something OIC and NHS Orkney can then sell as a success (although summer happens every year)… and it may even last until the autumn…