December 23, 2021: The British government has shortened the mandatory Covid-19 self-isolation period in England from 10 days to seven days for those who receive negative lateral flow tests on two consecutive days.
On Wednesday, Health Minister Sajid Javid announced that to minimize disruption and “following expert clinical advice,” those who get a negative lateral flow result on days six and seven of their quarantine period will be allowed to leave isolation.
The U.K. is battling an increase in highly transmissible omicron variant cases, with fears mounting that health services could be overwhelmed and economic activity dented.
Until now, the British government has resisted emulating several countries in mainland Europe that have imposed strict containment measures for the holiday period.
The mandatory isolation period was reduced from 14 days to 10 days in late 2020 as the alpha variant spread in various regions of the U.K., and the quarantine requirement for vaccinated close contacts of positive cases was decreased during the delta wave earlier this year.
On Wednesday, Irene Petersen, professor of epidemiology and health informatics at University College London, told CNBC that shortening the isolation period was a good move since the people are not infectious beyond day seven. The requirement for consecutive negative tests will catch most anomalies.
“I look a little bit on the sensitivity of that, and if you say a single test has a sensitivity of nearly 90%, if you combine the sensitivity of the two tests, you are up at 99%, and that means we will have few who would be false negative,” she said.
“Also, taking into consideration that we only have, let’s say, 10% are still infectious at that time, it would be less than one in 1,000 people who would be false negative after that. So I think it is a sensible move right now to cut it to seven days.”
The U.K. government also announced Wednesday that it had signed two contracts for a combined 4.25 million courses of Covid-19 antiviral pills.
Pfizer announced Wednesday that it will provide an additional 2.5 million doses of its COVID-19 pill Paxlovid to the country, with a total of 2.75 million due to be delivered throughout 2022.
The British government has ordered 1.75 million additional courses of Merck Sharp and Dohme’s Lagevrio pill, with both options that are expected to be effective against omicron in reducing the risk of hospitalization and death in high-risk patients.
We provide the insights on leaders who are responsible for taking their organization to new heights, all the while bringing together a group of talented individuals.
In an industry as competitive and fast-paced as Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), standing out from the crowd requires innovation and adaptability. The cracks in the CPG supply chain were exposed long before the global pandemic struck, but the events of the past year only exacerbated the weaknesses.
Supply chain leaders, including VPs, often find themselves making bets with unknown financial consequences. Having started with largely infeasible plans generated by deterministic “one-number” planning systems, compounded by unexpected supply or demand disruptions, they are forced into last-minute adjustments to meet operational and financial goals.
Unsurprisingly, today’s supply chain faces numerous issues, including sustainability, technology, global economic and political instability, talent management, and supply chain resilience. Advanced forecasting algorithms and predictive analytics are used in supply chain management to help organizations of all sizes make better decisions by providing insights into what’s going on in their business at any given moment and predicting future trends.
Ensuring the right products are in the right place and at the right time is critical for companies also dealing with supply chain constraints and a high degree of variability. Uncertainty has become the name of the game and the only way to effectively optimize inventory through continuous, data-driven assessments, planning, and decision-making.
Food Huggers, a consumer brand that designs products to reduce waste at home, may be in an enviable position now but before they found Extensiv Order Manager, managing booming orders and staying on top of inventory was a huge operational challenge. The business has inventory spread across multiple geographically distributed warehouses, with orders received via multiple sales channels, including Shopify storefronts and Amazon.
By late 202, the alarm bells were just starting to ring. Researchers discovered that Russian spies had months earlier burrowed deep into the networks of several U.S. federal networks. The spies, working for Russia’s foreign intelligence service, had first targeted SolarWinds, an IT company whose software helps to remotely manage the networks of thousands of businesses, Fortune 500 organizations and federal government agencies.