COVID19-What's Going On in Your Community?

In South West Scotland,

• Schools closed (yesterday was last day) except for special needs children and kids of essential workers.
• Universities also closed
• Pubs, cafes, restaurants, clubs, gyms all closed (but not take-aways).
• Over 70s advised to self isolate for next 2 weeks (expected to change to longer)
• Work at home if you can
• Shops near me recovering form panic buying - loo rolls available this morning.
• Massive government effort in terms of paying 80% of laid off people's wages and all sorts of grants, tax let-offs for business - exact details not clear yet. Lots of other economic measures too.

I'm not criticising the lack of perfect clarity - this is a huge demand on government and it's bound to take little while to sort all the details. I think I'll get some sort of grant to keep the business going but it's not quite clear how I get it yet.

MK

In South West Scotland,

• Schools closed (yesterday was last day) except for special needs children and kids of essential workers.
• Universities also closed
• Pubs, cafes, restaurants, clubs, gyms all closed (but not take-aways).
• Over 70s advised to self isolate for next 2 weeks (expected to change to longer)
• Work at home if you can
• Shops near me recovering form panic buying - loo rolls available this morning.
• Massive government effort in terms of paying 80% of laid off people's wages and all sorts of grants, tax let-offs for business - exact details not clear yet. Lots of other economic measures too.

I'm not criticising the lack of perfect clarity - this is a huge demand on government and it's bound to take little while to sort all the details. I think I'll get some sort of grant to keep the business going but it's not quite clear how I get it yet.

MK

In Belgium easy to explain, Michael. Total lockdown and by yesterday 3 pm all borders are closed in and out excluding transports and few other things. The main airport is closed and here people seem almost disciplined. Different than Italy where all are crazy and the challenge is to avoid the controls, stay in parks, parties, music, and "movida". A few less in Spain where the situation is similar. It seems that in Gent where I live now there are not cases, at least for now.

I have ordered a couple of days ago a component from Farnell Uk but I have not yet received the shipment notification. I supposed it will arrive Monday. In the meantime, I got a UPS notification from US (Chicago ) that something is coming here. The expected delivery time is as usual.

Enrico

Enrico,

Sure Italians don't like following rules (or should I say, each one follows their own set of rules), but I am following very closely the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy from the UK, both because my family is there and many of my close friends, all over Italy, and I can assure you that people are not going around like crazy, trying to avoid controls anymore.There is still a minority of people that are moving too much perhaps, but the vast majority are taking this pandemic seriously. Anyway, the statistics on the active cases and the deaths you see now are not due to the behaviour kept in the last couple weeks, and definitely not since the lock down. Unfortunately there has been a huge mismanagement of the situation at the very beginning, where the combination of far too few tests carried out and the lack of restrictions on movements, made it hard to track down the virus in the attempt to stop it from spreading. This led to the point they are now. Hopefully the contagion should peak in a week (perhaps 2, due to the massive movement of people following the lock down in the north). Let's hope so.

Here in UK, so far, the Government has, in my opinion, failed to show proper leadership when it needed to, which in turn instilled the irrational/borderline panic behaviour in the public we are witnessing in the last week. I live in the North East England, and in the last week I haven't been able to find things like flour, pasta, cans of beans/vegetables at the supermarket, never mind toilet rolls. Never, in the 15 years I lived here, I have experienced that. Now, the Government seems to be more assertive and clear on its actions, so things are starting to improve. I just hope the experts are right, and all the measures taken so far have been rolled out at the right time.I do suspect, though, the response has been too slow so far, but I hope I'm wrong.

Hopefully in a few months all will be back to normality. In the meanwhile, stay safe everyone!

Fabio

Similar here down the road in North West England.

- This last week of university teaching moved to on-line delivery.

- Most university staff now working from home, so mass effort to get people equipped for remote working.

- Supermarket panic buying getting worse ( they are now even panic buying tins of haggis ! ). Still no toilet rolls, lots of empty shelves - about half of my usual weekly shop was out of stock.

- Social distancing measures not proving popular with the younger generation - Police last night had to break up around 130x 14-18 year olds gathered in the local park.

- Roads are a lot quieter. Campus is like a ghost town.

- Not aware of any local confirmed cases of COVID-19 as yet.