When do you think the Ibiza season will start in 2020?
- Thread starter Dirk
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jimmiz
Well-Known Member
Funny. But not funny.
(temporada = season)
The “inside account” of how the decision was reached, from the Telegraph, which I suspect is not much read around these parts !
The clincher , if you can believe it: ”... holidaymakers bringing back coronavirus from Spanish nightclubs“.
Doing nothing is not an option': The 'significant change' that led to Spain quarantine
Chris Whitty told ministers they had to act after evidence of holidaymakers bringing back coronavirus from Spanish nightclubs
ByGordon Rayner, POLITICAL EDITOR27 July 2020 • 6:00pm
Visitors to Palmanova beach in Mallorca on Monday CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
Addressing members of the Cabinet’s “Covid-O” committee on Saturday afternoon, Chris Whitty made one thing clear: doing nothing was not an option.
The six senior ministers on the video call had just been given the news they had been dreading - that Britons had started to import coronavirus from a country deemed “safe” by the Government.
Only two days earlier, Spain had been controversially kept on the UK’s “air bridges” list, meaning people arriving from there did not have to go into quarantine.
But the Chief Medical Officer said the picture had worsened considerably over 48 hours. The number of new cases had leapt by 75 per cent and 15 out of Spain’s 19 regions were showing an increase in infections.
The “clincher”, however, was the news that 10 Britons who had tested positive for coronavirus since July 1 had reported visiting Spain in the 14 days before their test.
Although the number is dwarfed by the total positive tests in the UK - still running at more than 700 per day - the number was “statistically significant”, Prof Whitty told the ministers, who decided the risk of more imported infections was not one they were willing to take.
By 11pm on Saturday night, all arrivals in the UK from Spain were being told they had to quarantine themselves for two weeks, plunging the summer holiday season into chaos.
The decision was sudden, but it was not entirely unexpected. For more than a week the news coming out of Spain had been grim. A surge in coronavirus cases in Barcelona had turned into a full-blown second wave across Britain’s favourite holiday destination.
Yet ministers had held firm; a review of destinations on the UK’s “safe list” last Thursday added five more countries, but removed none. Spain, it seemed, was to be considered a quarantine-free destination for at least another week until the next review date came around.
The news came as a huge relief to the 1.8 million tourists booked on flights to Spain in August, as well as to the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who was himself about to start a family holiday in the country.
However, on Friday night Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, told colleagues he was becoming “very concerned” about Spain after the Spanish health ministry shared data that day showing that new cases reported last Thursday and Friday were 75 per cent higher than those reported on the previous two days.
According to Downing Street, the pace of increase, together with the seven-day case rate and the picture of increasing cases across most regions of Spain “represented a significant change”.
In response, Public Health England and the Joint Biosecurity Centre undertook an urgent review and Mr Hancock called a meeting of the coronavirus operations committee - known as Covid-O - for 4.30pm on Saturday.
The 55-minute videoconference began with a presentation by Mr Hancock, aided by Dr Claire Gardiner, director general of the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC).
They took the committee members through a series of slides prepared by the JBC, which was set up by the Government to provide independent analysis of disease outbreaks in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Also on the call were Michael Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who chairs the committee; Mr Shapps; Steve Barclay, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury; Priti Patel, the Home Secretary and representatives of the devolved administrations including Wales’s health minister Vaughan Gething and Holyrood’s Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf.
Baroness Sugg, the Foreign Office minister, was also on the call (so we need to add her name to the list and say in second par six ministers, not five)
Mr Hancock explained that although Spain has instituted regional lockdowns, nightclubs remain open in many areas, suggesting Madrid’s restrictions were not as tough as the UK would have expected (nightclubs remain closed in the UK). Of the 281 active outbreaks identified by the Spanish authorities, a third had been traced to social gatherings including nightclubs.
Infection rates in Spain and its islands were on the increase, and the percentage of positive tests being returned in the country were worryingly high.
“Someone pointed out that if we had seen this level of infection in a region of England we would have put it straight into lockdown,” said a source briefed on the call.
The decisive moment, however, came with a slide which showed 10 Britons testing positive for coronavirus after visiting Spain.
“It was a small number but it was statistically significant enough to cause concern,” said one source briefed on the meeting.
For the first time, Britons who had visited a country deemed “safe” by the Government appeared to have brought coronavirus home with them.
Chief Medical Officer for England, Chris Whitty and Britain's Secretary of State of Health Matt Hancock CREDIT: Reuters
Prof Whitty spoke next, though his opinion was a foregone conclusion. Ministers and health officials had repeatedly defended the quarantine policy - which was not in place when Covid-19 was at its peak in the UK - by saying it would be more effective when infection rates in the UK were low and other countries had higher rates.
If the Government was going to follow through on its own logic for the quarantine policy, Spain would have to go back on the quarantine list.
“Ahead of the meeting Chris Whitty had already made it clear that he was going to say that doing nothing wasn’t an option,” said one Government source. “It wasn’t so much that the rate of transmission had increased over the previous three days, it was that there were quite a few cases of Britons coming back from Spain with the virus so that was the clincher.
“That was the reason it all happened so suddenly. There’s no point in taking this kind of action unless it’s immediate, because you risk more people coming back with the virus and spreading it around.”
Another source said: “There was some discussion about imposing quarantine depending on which region of Spain people had been to, and Michael Gove said that from a selfish point of view he should have argued for it to be mainland Spain only, as he was supposed to be going to Ibiza at the end of the week, but he and everyone else agreed it should be the whole country, partly because you can’t stop people travelling between regions while they are there.”
Mr Shapps realised his own department was going to have to announce the closure of the “air bridge” with Spain which he had fought so hard to establish.
“Someone made a joke about Grant’s villa looking lovely,” said a source, “but he was totally on board with the need to impose a full lockdown on the whole of Spain. There was broad consensus on the call about what needed to be done. Michael Gove summed up the position after everyone had spoken, and there wasn’t any dissension.”
News of the decision to re-impose quarantine on arrivals from Spain was announced at 7.30pm, effective from 11pm that night.
The clincher , if you can believe it: ”... holidaymakers bringing back coronavirus from Spanish nightclubs“.
Doing nothing is not an option': The 'significant change' that led to Spain quarantine
Chris Whitty told ministers they had to act after evidence of holidaymakers bringing back coronavirus from Spanish nightclubs
ByGordon Rayner, POLITICAL EDITOR27 July 2020 • 6:00pm
Visitors to Palmanova beach in Mallorca on Monday CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
Addressing members of the Cabinet’s “Covid-O” committee on Saturday afternoon, Chris Whitty made one thing clear: doing nothing was not an option.
The six senior ministers on the video call had just been given the news they had been dreading - that Britons had started to import coronavirus from a country deemed “safe” by the Government.
Only two days earlier, Spain had been controversially kept on the UK’s “air bridges” list, meaning people arriving from there did not have to go into quarantine.
But the Chief Medical Officer said the picture had worsened considerably over 48 hours. The number of new cases had leapt by 75 per cent and 15 out of Spain’s 19 regions were showing an increase in infections.
The “clincher”, however, was the news that 10 Britons who had tested positive for coronavirus since July 1 had reported visiting Spain in the 14 days before their test.
Although the number is dwarfed by the total positive tests in the UK - still running at more than 700 per day - the number was “statistically significant”, Prof Whitty told the ministers, who decided the risk of more imported infections was not one they were willing to take.
By 11pm on Saturday night, all arrivals in the UK from Spain were being told they had to quarantine themselves for two weeks, plunging the summer holiday season into chaos.
The decision was sudden, but it was not entirely unexpected. For more than a week the news coming out of Spain had been grim. A surge in coronavirus cases in Barcelona had turned into a full-blown second wave across Britain’s favourite holiday destination.
Yet ministers had held firm; a review of destinations on the UK’s “safe list” last Thursday added five more countries, but removed none. Spain, it seemed, was to be considered a quarantine-free destination for at least another week until the next review date came around.
The news came as a huge relief to the 1.8 million tourists booked on flights to Spain in August, as well as to the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who was himself about to start a family holiday in the country.
However, on Friday night Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, told colleagues he was becoming “very concerned” about Spain after the Spanish health ministry shared data that day showing that new cases reported last Thursday and Friday were 75 per cent higher than those reported on the previous two days.
According to Downing Street, the pace of increase, together with the seven-day case rate and the picture of increasing cases across most regions of Spain “represented a significant change”.
In response, Public Health England and the Joint Biosecurity Centre undertook an urgent review and Mr Hancock called a meeting of the coronavirus operations committee - known as Covid-O - for 4.30pm on Saturday.
The 55-minute videoconference began with a presentation by Mr Hancock, aided by Dr Claire Gardiner, director general of the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC).
They took the committee members through a series of slides prepared by the JBC, which was set up by the Government to provide independent analysis of disease outbreaks in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Also on the call were Michael Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who chairs the committee; Mr Shapps; Steve Barclay, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury; Priti Patel, the Home Secretary and representatives of the devolved administrations including Wales’s health minister Vaughan Gething and Holyrood’s Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf.
Baroness Sugg, the Foreign Office minister, was also on the call (so we need to add her name to the list and say in second par six ministers, not five)
Mr Hancock explained that although Spain has instituted regional lockdowns, nightclubs remain open in many areas, suggesting Madrid’s restrictions were not as tough as the UK would have expected (nightclubs remain closed in the UK). Of the 281 active outbreaks identified by the Spanish authorities, a third had been traced to social gatherings including nightclubs.
Infection rates in Spain and its islands were on the increase, and the percentage of positive tests being returned in the country were worryingly high.
“Someone pointed out that if we had seen this level of infection in a region of England we would have put it straight into lockdown,” said a source briefed on the call.
The decisive moment, however, came with a slide which showed 10 Britons testing positive for coronavirus after visiting Spain.
“It was a small number but it was statistically significant enough to cause concern,” said one source briefed on the meeting.
For the first time, Britons who had visited a country deemed “safe” by the Government appeared to have brought coronavirus home with them.
Chief Medical Officer for England, Chris Whitty and Britain's Secretary of State of Health Matt Hancock CREDIT: Reuters
Prof Whitty spoke next, though his opinion was a foregone conclusion. Ministers and health officials had repeatedly defended the quarantine policy - which was not in place when Covid-19 was at its peak in the UK - by saying it would be more effective when infection rates in the UK were low and other countries had higher rates.
If the Government was going to follow through on its own logic for the quarantine policy, Spain would have to go back on the quarantine list.
“Ahead of the meeting Chris Whitty had already made it clear that he was going to say that doing nothing wasn’t an option,” said one Government source. “It wasn’t so much that the rate of transmission had increased over the previous three days, it was that there were quite a few cases of Britons coming back from Spain with the virus so that was the clincher.
“That was the reason it all happened so suddenly. There’s no point in taking this kind of action unless it’s immediate, because you risk more people coming back with the virus and spreading it around.”
Another source said: “There was some discussion about imposing quarantine depending on which region of Spain people had been to, and Michael Gove said that from a selfish point of view he should have argued for it to be mainland Spain only, as he was supposed to be going to Ibiza at the end of the week, but he and everyone else agreed it should be the whole country, partly because you can’t stop people travelling between regions while they are there.”
Mr Shapps realised his own department was going to have to announce the closure of the “air bridge” with Spain which he had fought so hard to establish.
“Someone made a joke about Grant’s villa looking lovely,” said a source, “but he was totally on board with the need to impose a full lockdown on the whole of Spain. There was broad consensus on the call about what needed to be done. Michael Gove summed up the position after everyone had spoken, and there wasn’t any dissension.”
News of the decision to re-impose quarantine on arrivals from Spain was announced at 7.30pm, effective from 11pm that night.
eclipse15
Well-Known Member
Think the official link is this one, but might be a bit too top level: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
eclipse15
Well-Known Member
The big official data is here I think: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-statistics-and-analysis
Buckley
Well-Known Member
The “inside account” of how the decision was reached, from the Telegraph, which I suspect is not much read around these parts !
The clincher , if you can believe it: ”... holidaymakers bringing back coronavirus from Spanish nightclubs“.
Doing nothing is not an option': The 'significant change' that led to Spain quarantine
Chris Whitty told ministers they had to act after evidence of holidaymakers bringing back coronavirus from Spanish nightclubs
ByGordon Rayner, POLITICAL EDITOR27 July 2020 • 6:00pm
Visitors to Palmanova beach in Mallorca on Monday CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
This doesn't address the issue that our Govt was had given differing statuses to mainland Spain and the islands, the disparity between the data from each hasn't significantly changed, but they changed the advice.
( I have a Telegraph subscription btw)
stivi
Well-Known Member
I couldn't find it but I'm after a 14day avg per region.
in spain we had 855 yesterday and 6 deaths. but one day numbers aren't helpful IMO.
check this out
here you'll see (fourth column) the number of cases per 100k inhabitants in the last two weeks. canary islands 7, balearics 9. yes, some areas of spain look crap (as I'd said in the info thread, aragón and catalonia mainly), but I wanted to compare this data with the same of the UK and I can't seem to find it.
anyway, rant over for now, but it truly is frustrating. sadly it might have a copycat effect too for other countries.
Ibizapaul
Active Member
It is a shame other regions of Spain haven't been quite as strict as Ibiza with clubs opening etc. It does feel really harsh on the islands when they have such low numbers and have been really careful....very frustrating indeed for all the sacrifices to be in vain
Buckley
Well-Known Member
Coronavirus Update (Live): 108,278,305 Cases and 2,377,196 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer
Live statistics and coronavirus news tracking the number of confirmed cases, recovered patients, tests, and death toll due to the COVID-19 coronavirus from Wuhan, China. Coronavirus counter with new cases, deaths, and number of tests per 1 Million population. Historical data and info. Daily...
www.worldometers.info
Any use?
McRackin
Super Moderator
That's what happens when you leave those decisions to the different regional governments. Time has proven that was a mistake.
stivi
Well-Known Member
Coronavirus Update (Live): 108,278,305 Cases and 2,377,196 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer
Live statistics and coronavirus news tracking the number of confirmed cases, recovered patients, tests, and death toll due to the COVID-19 coronavirus from Wuhan, China. Coronavirus counter with new cases, deaths, and number of tests per 1 Million population. Historical data and info. Daily...
Any use?
thanks but I don't think they've got those details on there neither. I'm sure somewhere on that UK page they are but I couldn't find them. gotta rush now but I was genuinely curious to see how UK regions are looking with this data comparison.
eclipse15
Well-Known Member
Theres a mega spreadsheet here with all the regions on: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/downloads/csv/coronavirus-cases_latest.csv
Source: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/#category=utlas&map=rate (if you scroll down, it is split by Nation/Region/Unitary Authority/Local Authority
Source: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/#category=utlas&map=rate (if you scroll down, it is split by Nation/Region/Unitary Authority/Local Authority
Mondo99
Active Member
I feel really sorry for the people of Ibiza, who thought their season was back on only to see it scuppered by political point-scoring by our complete joke of a government. I'm p*ssed off that my trip's looking increasingly unlikely this year, but even though I've been looking forward to it for months, it's only four days our of my year and there's always next year. It's f*cking up their whole livelihood.
Allgäuer91
New Member
So glad i went to Ibiza 2x last year. Personally i dont think the Island (especially the Party Scene) will ever be the same. The only way they will open up Clubs in the future ist with serious contact Tracing, immunity-passports etc . And thats only if we dont get the Economic Crisis of our Lifetime, wich we will probably have, especially in Spain (I mean, what do you think will happen after a second wave,and a second Lockdown.). Time to get used to the new normal.
The Sun God
Active Member
the way I see it, it's pure politics. the British government decided to exploit the outbreaks in Catalonia to tarnish the whole of Spain in order to distract attention from the British government's own ineptitude and also to boost local tourism under pressure from the British tourism lobby - whilst the Spanish meanwhile were pissed off with the French government for warning their people against visiting Barcelona. It's totally understandable that every lobby is looking out for their own in the current climate but I suspect it is cynically disguised as 'concern' about other countries.
Buckley
Well-Known Member
Indeed. Spend your holiday spends on a discounted Nandos (Mon-Wed only)
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