I was looking at an email I sent mum back at the beginning of March. I said I would postpone my visit for Mother’s Day because I wasn’t sure how this virus thing was going to develop. And then a couple of weeks later the flights were stopped and that was that. I don’t think we had any idea back then what the next 6 months would hold.
While the number of cases has been rising steadily in Spain, there hasn’t been too much of a panic as the key measurement figure they are using here is hospital capacity. However, things have changed for the worse in Madrid where the hospital capacity has gone ‘into the red’, which means the % of beds used by coronavirus patients has increased to a worrying level. I am expecting to hear that new measures are taken in Madrid while they get things back under control.
Measuring the state of the virus by hospital capacity does seem an easier way for people to understand what is going on. The overall ‘infected’ figures don’t really tell us very much – particularly given that a high % of recent cases are people without symptoms (at least, that’s the case here). We know that currently 6% of beds in our hospital district are taken by coronavirus patients, so that’s a very meaningful figure to watch.
We got a message from the council this week saying the tests had come back negative. I have no idea what tests and whether that was random testing (of which a lot is going on) or whether someone had symptoms. But at least it indicates that the council will keep us informed if the virus gets here.
I’d had high hopes that someone would want to buy the shop/flat to get away from things – however according to the BBC (which is just plain depressing reading) it looks as though Northumberland is under new measures – and given how close Alston is to the Northumberland border, I guess it’s not going to be as appealing as I had hoped.
We’re off to Llerena today to find out about upgrading our Internet connection. Hopefully that will be something available to us soon!
Barry doesn’t seem to be pining too much for Gary. I put lots of things in her cage to act as a distraction, so she’s been busy sorting that all out which hopefully will take her mind off him not being there. They are very fussy birds, so like to organize things in their cage (generally by chewing them up!).