I'm concerned about what's happening in Scotland. The children went back to school last week and it has turned out that
some of them were gathering together in house parties just before this and these have sparked off clusters. Now of course there's the concern that they'll take it into school with them. Masks are still not mandatory in schools, I suspect something will have to happen before they will be made mandatory.
The Aberdeen cluster, or should I say outbreak, I can hardly call it a cluster when there are 207 linked cases and 380 cases in total in the region, is slowly being brought under control. It caused the daily total to peak at 66 cases 12 days after the alleged superspreading event and just a couple of days after the lockdown was introduced, although there was a day with 65 cases about a week later. At least it hasn't shot up exponentially and there is clear evidence of a downward trend. Only 13 cases in the region today. The mood music says the lockdown will continue for another week when it's reviewed on Wednesday.
However infections are substantially up all across the country, although in many areas from a very low base. We had three cases within a week in my region last week, which may not sound much but we went five weeks without any cases at all over July. The same pattern can be seen in most regions.
The modellers have come up with something called "exceedance" to show whether a region is having significantly more cases than would be expected from their model. I don't really understand their colour coding but of course Aberdeenshire is lit up like a Christmas tree. Their model is still predicting only 10 to 25 new cases per day by last Friday and all I can say is, in your dreams. I think the modelling was heavily predicated on deaths but now very few people are dying (younger people becoming infected, mainly) it's becoming skewed. From being over-pessimistic it's looking over-optimistic. (We actually had 65 new cases on Friday!)
So there's a general rise in the background level of sporadic cases, which was down as low as 7 cases per day in early July. There have also been more clusters, though nothing as spectacular as in Aberdeen. Something going on in north-east Glasgow apparently, although they seem to have a lid on that, also a nasty little outbreak in Orkney, which had been clear for over 50 days, due to someone on the crew of a fishing boat getting the virus in Aberdeen, infecting some of his mates on board, and the boat ending up in Orkney where nobody was really distancing and it spread to the outer islands. (Rumours of wicker men being prepared, and people battening down
very quickly there.)
And there's a food processing plant in Perthshire that worked without incident all through the lockdown that has had to close because of a cluster. One employee caught the virus at home (linked to the Aberdeen cluster I wonder) and then a handful more in the factory got it. Nine cases so far in that cluster.
So here we are, supposed to have been aiming for no more than 5.5 new cases per day on average, and having made it to 7.1, now sitting on an average of 47.4. That is 8.7 cases per day per million population, which isn't actually dreadful on a scale of Germany to Spain, but it's still not where I'd like to see it. I just hope that number continues to fall as they get these clusters cleared up, but with the schools open and the pubs open and people getting careless and throwing house parties, I think it will be a miracle if we avoid further clusters.
