Yes. Although whilst we have been criticised for not testing in the community

from a containment perspective (and obviously that will also give the only true picture of how much the virus has spread) at least the approach of only testing those who have serious enough symptoms to attend hospital gives a reasonable picture of how many people have severe symptoms.

And I don't think the "death rate" is particularly instructive (because obviously we don't know the true case numbers) but the number of deaths is a useful direct comparable with countries such as France, Italy and Spain.

The other figure that would be interesting to know more often is how many people are currently in intensive care. A survey I saw 2 days ago said that at the 26th it was around 700 which to be honest was a lot lower than I was expecting if its anywhere near correct.

This new breathing device that can prevent people needing to go onto intensive care wards could also be very important in terms of freeing up those crucial intensive care beds for this and indeed all the other reasons that people need them.

Posted By: Jim, Mar 30, 13:03:55