Squible

Sounds like an awful idea. Would these doctors all have the same level of qualifications required of a UK GP? Even if they do, they wouldn't be familiar with the local protocols and procedures. Even within the UK, in different regions different antibiotics are prescribed due to the local population of bugs, the local GP will know what to prescribe, a GP from India might prescribe an antibiotic that the pharmacists would struggle to get hold of in the UK. Say someone is having symptoms of a severe heart attack and need to go to a PCI centre, again the local GP will know where to send them, will a GP from elsewhere in the world?

Yes, it may well have been!

I have a 2009 1.9 TDI, same BXE engine but in the facelift body. Overall it's been very reliable. The only "big" job it needed was when the DMF gave out at around 40k miles but other than that it's been great. Like you say, no DPF and I find that it still gets better fuel economy than modern diesels do.

Sorry to bring up an old post but thought I might be able to add some insight. I've been on-call over the weekend and only just catching up on the thread now. Covid-19 can be stated as a cause of death without any positive swab results, it's up to the doctor completing the medical certificate to decide. Yesterday, after a chat with my consultant, I completed a death certificate with cause of death as covid despite a swab result coming back as negative. This patient had symptoms, blood tests and a chest x-ray that looked like covid rather than a chest infection. So we agreed that despite the negative swab the patient had and most likely died of covid. From what we've seen, it's not uncommon for multiple swab tests to come back negative. I've seen some tests only come back as positive after the third or fourth swab. I think the sensitivity of these tests have been reported to be around 70% but is also reliant on good technique.

Can't say for certain but I assumed it was because a lot of hospitals don't have the admin staff on the weekends that help facilitate completion and sending off of death certificates. There are also less doctors on over the weekend (just the on-call team) so it's not uncommon for death certificates to not get completed until after the weekend. I don't know where the official figures come from - but if it's from registered deaths then the delay in competition of death certificates would explain that.

Gove did give an answer to be fair, he said we don't have enough reagents to conduct the tests. What they didn't state was what was being done to get more reagents and when we could expect to have more supply.

I think it's still too early to tell and unsure if we will be able to know a couple of weeks down the line just by looking at healthcare staff. Hospitals have only really started seeing a rise in COVID-19 patients in the past 1-2 weeks around the region I work in. I do have several colleagues who have had to self isolate and have come back, however, due to the national testing policy, they have not had tests to confirm if they had COVID-19. Their symptoms could be explained by COVID, could also have been a different virus/illness. If they develop symptoms in the future, it could be COVID, it could be something else. If they don't develop symptoms in the future - is it because they are immune? Or is it because their use of PPE has protected them? Until we get more testing ability for the active virus and antibody tests to show if you have been exposed to the virus it is going to be difficult to answer that question. Good news is that I've heard antibody tests are being rolled out in some hospitals this week. There was a study that used Macaque monkeys that suggested monkeys that had recovered from the virus and developed antibodies could not be reinfected - at least in the short term. Yes, here have been some interesting reports on viral shedding like you have shared! There are also reports that dead bodies can have very high viral loads - which makes after life care and burial etc. more difficult. Sorry I didn't mention this in my previous reply. As you have said, resolution of symptoms doesn't necessarily mean you don't still have the virus in your system. The government basis for 7 days isolation after starting symptoms is because they think viral transmission risk drops significantly by this time. I haven't looked at this data myself but I'm sure it has been approved by many far more competent than I. I think this applies to a lot of things about the virus, we simply don't know for certain. It's a new virus and we still don't know a lot of things about it. There has been a lot of research that has shed some information but we don't have the quality or quantity of information that we do for other diseases.

People who have developed immunity to the virus shouldn't be able to spread it themselves by coughing/sneezing but can still help it spread by touching contaminated surfaces etc.

That's not what is being advised for health care workers in the UK 😕 They are stating use of a standard surgical face mask is sufficient for contact with COVID19 positive patients.

There's also speculation that it may not have been true re-infection but rather the patient did not fully recover from the disease and experienced a secondary flare up. Other thing is that we don't know the immunological background of these patients. Some studies done on monkeys have shown that they developed antibodies to COVID-19 which prevented them from being reinfected by the disease - we don't know how this will translate in humans and how long the immunity would be for. From what I understand shingles is reactivation of latent varicella zoster in the nerve roots - not due to mutation.

It's pretty much impossible to do the job whilst staying 2 metres away from another person... In my opinion the only benefit of doing this for the video would be PR/setting an example for the public.

They are working on a point of use antibody test for it with a plan to use it to test healthcare workers. The only problem is even if you have immunity you can still transmit the disease (although lower risk) through contact of contaminated surfaces etc. The general consensus is that almost everybody will develop immunity unless they have certain conditions that affect their immune system. There were a couple of cases caused some confusion but they haven't confirmed definite re-infection.

The other worrying point is the lower number of ITUs and ventilators we have per population compared to those countries.

Some healthy, some with common comorbidities that were well controlled. They are all what most people would term "fit and well". There are reports of ibuprofen worsening the disease course. The effects haven't been studied properly so currently advice is to avoid if you can and take paracetamol instead.

The media has mainly focused on older people being affected - which comparatively is true. From the front lines however, I have heard of many young healthy people being affected. Just today a colleague that works in a different hospital has told me they have 3 patients all in their early 30s (one of them is 30 yrs old) being intubated in ITU. It really is scary stuff.