Photobombed!

G and I did the lovely Bayfield bird walk this morning in glorious sunshine. It was cold at 4C, but bizarrely felt a lot warmer than yesterday at 10C due to the lack of wind. We stopped at the Natural Surroundings cafe where G treated me to a hot chocolate and piece of carrot cake. I was taking a photo of the snowdrops outside the cafe, when the picture was photobombed by a bee - on 11th Feb! This afternoon I was doing more pc sorting out and have finished moving across my email folders. Annoyingly Outlook has now decided to stop sending emails - a problem to sort another day (and now it decided to start working again without me doing anything). Then Blip took 3 goes to load my photo. 

Day 697 / Day 16 Post Plan B (for my record only)
The UKHSA confirms the new Omicron sub variant has a 'substantial' growth advantage over the original, with 7,194 cases to end of Jan, largely in London and the SE. No change in vaccine effectiveness has yet been found.  The ONS confirmed suspicions that the official statistics are now reporting substantially lower cases than the reality found in their weekly infection survey. So the dashboard reported an average of 101k cases a day between 16th and 22nd Jan, but the ONS infection survey shows the true number was c280.5k a day. To be expected when the Govt dropped the requirement for a PCR test if you have a positive LFT, and given the survey picks up asymptomatic people (there is talk that the ONS survey is to be dropped, which to me would be complete madness). Today the UK scrapped testing for fully vaccinated travellers arriving in the country. Spain will no longer require kids over 12 from non-EU countries to be fully vaccinated, instead they will need to show a recent negative test from Monday. England's R number has narrowed slightly to 0.8 to 1.0. A third of over 65s who catch Covid go to the Doctor for medical treatment for follow up illness. Economic growth for 2021 was the highest on record at 7.5%, but obviously that followed the deepest slump for 99 years in 2020 of 9.7%. Ontario has declared a state of emergency after two weeks of protests against Covid restrictions. Gatwick is reopening its south terminal which has been closed for nearly two years.