It’s scandalous that you can’t see how many covid cases in your city

[Redolent]

Oh, but you can - you just have to put in your postcode into one of those online search tools right?

Wrong.

Those only show Pillar 1 data. ‘Pillar 1’ is swab testing in hospitals. ‘Pillar 2’ is testing among the wider population. It’s where 75% of cases are.

The overall figure for new cases published each day is accurate. But it’s almost impossible to find out where they are at a local and regional level.

So using one of those tools, you could have been assured that your city hasn’t seen any new cases for weeks, when that’s patently false.

Nationally, your chance of getting coronavirus might be 1:1250. But locally, it could be 1:250, and you would have no way of knowing. Or modifying your behaviour accordingly.

In the FT today:

www.ft.com/content/301c847c-a317-4950-a75b-8e66933d423a

i'm in canada and we are told by health region. some towns are very very small and additional location data would be a huge breach of privacy, probably stigma and maybe blame if someone has a family member who becomes ill. several villages of a population of 500-1000 throughout.
but we are told way more data than the UK.

It isn’t being done deliberately, it’s a consequence of using the newly set-up Lighthouse Labs for pillar 2 testing. They are run by people who have no experience or understanding of how to manage microbiology labs. The Independent had a very good article about this a couple of days ago, it’s very accurate. here. The only thing I would add is that the Govt were sort of driven to this by a media storm about testing, which lacked any actual understanding about the, admittedly complicated, situation at the time. In short, they should have concentrated on supporting the NHS labs to upscale with help from academic, vet and APHA labs - all of which have the necessary skills and basic knowledge of how to manage diagnostic testing.

@PineconeOfDoom

It isn’t being done deliberately, it’s a consequence of using the newly set-up Lighthouse Labs for pillar 2 testing. They are run by people who have no experience or understanding of how to manage microbiology labs. The Independent had a very good article about this a couple of days ago, it’s very accurate. here. The only thing I would add is that the Govt were sort of driven to this by a media storm about testing, which lacked any actual understanding about the, admittedly complicated, situation at the time. In short, they should have concentrated on supporting the NHS labs to upscale with help from academic, vet and APHA labs - all of which have the necessary skills and basic knowledge of how to manage diagnostic testing.

Thanks for adding to the discussion.

But here you seem to position the government as passive actors who made a one-time mistake, having been swept up by a media storm on testing. Evidence instead suggest that they continue to repeatedly bypass Local Public Health in favour of dishing out large contracts to private companies (Test and Trace about £108m).

It keeps happening. Just over a week ago, senior spy Dr Clare Gardiner from GCHQ was appointed to run the Joint Biosecurity Centre under Baroness Dido Harding. Yet another confusing and parallel structure for running public health.

You can, I can't find the link now but I saw one the other day which mapped either cases or deaths on a per town basis, I think it was deaths.

But here you seem to position the government as passive actors who made a one-time mistake, having been swept up by a media storm on testing.

No don’t put words into my mouth please. That’s not what I said at all.

My local council release our data including pillar two once a week, on the council website plus all councillors share on their fb pages, we're in a unitary authority. The figures are different to any of the national search tools, because of the inclusion of pillar two

I live in a popular seaside town ( well just along the coast) and their rationale is that with all the daytrippers they need to be focussed locally and we may well need another lockdown.

Morning, everyone. Just a reminder that we can't allow entire articles to be republished here due to copyright law. A few sentences is fine but we've had to take down the post with the whole piece in, we're afraid.