South West COVID cases rise alarmingly
The ‘R’ rate of COVID19 infections is currently at a median of 1.04 for the south west, which is the highest in England.
This is the ‘reproduction rate’ of the virus, or how many people will become infected through contact with one infected person. Measles has a natural R rate of 15, for example, and it is thought that if no precaautions were taken the COVID19 virus would have an R rate of about 3.
An R rate of one or below is what the UK government aimed for during the initial lockdown period.
The study from the MRC Biostatistics Unit at Cambridge University showed that the data from different areas of the south-west range from 0.77 to 1.38, giving a median score of 1.04.
This demonstrates the regional variation across England, with the R rate rising in the south west and the south east, and new restrictions announced earlier in the north-west, but the east of England and Midlands regions are lower. The data suggests a mid-August death peak of 43 – 84 per day, which is not a return to the peaks in April.
Speaking to Sky News this morning, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock did not address this new data:
He said: “These figures are published by the statisticians and there will be another publication tomorrow and I’m not going to pre-judge again what the statisticians say because it is important to do this properly.
“But we have seen that the number of cases which was coming down pretty sharply that has flattened off, the number of people who have positive cases and we follow these things very closely.”
Not all workplaces have the luxury of being able to work from home, and many businesses are following the recent UK government advice to bring their furloughed employees back into the workplace if it is safe to do so.
We have been working hard to update our products and ranges in ways which are helpful during the pandemic, from our automated fire roll call app to changing how you manage your shift patterns.
Our latest offering is an automated symptom-screening solution, in partnership with our long-time partner Suprema – a leading global provider of security and biometrics solutions with a Global Sales Network of over 140 countries and more than 1.5 million systems installed worldwide.
We feel that temperature detection is vital as a COVID-prevention strategy because a high temperature is less noticeable than other symptoms, such as a cough, and so may be overlooked by supervisors, or even by the employees themselves. There is also the danger of presenteeism, which is experiencing a resurgence due to the increase in lay-offs before the end of the furlough scheme
The Suprema FaceStation 2 Facial Recognition Terminal with Temperature Detection offers enhanced functionality when running with Tensor.NET:
- conducts rapid, contactless preliminary temperature screenings. This enables businesses to feel confident in a first-line filter for elevated body temperature. The terminal can be used in office buildings, warehouses, factories, schools, stations, airports and other public areas.
- generates alerts when detecting elevated body temperatures. This alert can be sent to the health and safety officers within your organisation, and can also be integrated with our access control system to automatically forbid entry to the premises.
- provides enhanced security with 1 or 2-factor authentication options. You can choose to authenticate employees and visitors using facial recognition alone or facial recognition alongside contactless radio-frequency smart card. EM/HID Prox, MiFare and DESFire card formats are supported.
If you’d like to find out more about the numerous features and extensive level of functionality that we can deliver, please contact us!
COVID19 POLICY: We provide online product demos, as well as online training once products are purchased, so that no unnecessary physical contact will take place. Our engineers are following a strict social distancing policy during the COVID19 pandemic.