COVID-19: New Variant a Magnitude More Transmissible.

 The Mrs is as I've said, dealing with a covid outbreak at a home she manages. The evidence seems to suggest this is the new variant.  The reason being this outbreak is getting past the most stringent of PPE measures.

Her staff wear surgical masks, gloves, face shields and aprons all day. They change the masks gloves and aprons after they deal with each resident and when they go to do something else. They are pretty good at doing this. Especially when there is an outbreak and the virus is close.

But it seems that the Mrs is burning through staff. It takes on average 4 days for each new member of staff (that hasn't worked there before, so no previous contact) to become infected.

The team that she got in the house last weekend, had a PCR test on Thursday and the results came up as positive on Saturday.

That's despite daily LFT tests showing negative.

Now I would normally argue that possibly there's a bad batch of PCR tests showing false positives. But with two members of staff in hospital and the others showing symptoms, it's a fair assumption that the PCR tests are currently accurate and the LFT tests are showing false negatives. 

Or the PCR is showing infection at a lower rate than the LFT can pick up.

Either way, the LFT test is supposed to be the first safeguard against an infected employee going into a home. If they can still give a negative LFT test for 3 days and then show positive on the weekly PCR test, what is the point of the LFT test?

Also, what is the point of PPE? If this new variant can get past the "normal" PPE, then it's pointless. I do wonder if the reason the NHS is struggling so much is because so many workers have been infected and tested positive and had to isolate.

Certainly in the wife's case she's now having severe difficulty finding staff to cover. The first wave are still suffering symptoms and not well enough to work. The second batch of workers are experiencing less severe symptoms, I assume because by then they are wary and have reduced their viral load by being over-cautious with infection control. But they still got infected. Hopefully not as severely.

The wife is back at the home today after isolation, but it's now a worry to see if she contracts the virus. Thankfully she's taken my advice and will get the home deep cleaned today. They have a squad they can call on to deep clean and set of a virus bomb in the house to disinfect every surface. It means moving the residents to the minibus on the drive for an hour, but worth it in terms of safety for residents and staff alike. I know the virus is only supposed to last 72 hours or so on surfaces, but it's best practice to be absolutely certain.

Neither of us are in the best of health and being close to 60 with a history of strokes and a heart attack earlier this year, I'm probably in a higher risk group. 

Ah well, I'm taking Vitamin D every day (high dose) which is supposed to help if you do get infected. Hopefully it's not a case of famous last words....