West Midlands hotspot

[middleager]

Can anybody help me to unpick reasons as to why the figures for Birmingham and the West Midlands are so high?

I live in Birmingham and understand it's the second largest city, but Manchester, the third largest city 'only' has 224 cases by comparison.

• the West Midlands accounts for 21 per cent of deaths

• Birmingham has 984 cases, the highest number of cases outside London

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/04/coronavirus-uk-how-many-confirmed-cases-in-your-area

• The University hospitals Birmingham NHS foundation trust has recorded the third highest number of deaths of any trust in the country at 102 deaths.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/coronavirus-hospitals-west-midlands-full-capacity-by-next-weekend

Apart from the size, my theories include

1. Crufts (50 countries including Italy flying to Birmingham Airport)

2. Cheltenham - up the road from Birmingham. 20k visitors, many travelling via Birmingham New Street and Birmingham Airport?

3. Diamond Cruise - 150 infected passengers flown back to Birmingham Airport and not quarantined.

Sorry upthread for writing deaths instead of cases. I hope this did not cause alarm.

I was pleased to see that a police warning was given to the MP.

Birmingham New Street is a central changing hub for many stations, so yes, that could be key.

I too expected to see Liverpool with higher numbers, given the football match and quarantine centre at the Wirral.

Ah thanks to the poster who mentioned the city of Manchester's population as opposed to greater Manchester.

I would also have thought that being further north would mean that those cities further from London would be less impacted, but Sheffield is pulling some big numbers too.

I’m from the West Midlands, I wouldn’t say Crufts or Cheltenham contributed to the west mids figures, I would say they contributed overall , but people travel from all over the country from to those events, so when people get infected they are then taking it back to their local area and it wouldn’t contribute to the West Mids figures per se.

It’s almost certainly the high number of Asian households that are multi generational and crammed in to smaller houses that has contributed.

I wouldn't say my area of West Midlands region is really badly hit.

I think Cheltenham / Crufts may have had a small impact but not really.

I do think that there is a good chance that certain communities are being harder hit than others. Large families, multi generational households, lots of socialising within the community.

Probably issues getting the message across.

It is scary and so sad.

I was pleased to see that a police warning was given to the MP.

Was it ? Looked like a mere telling off to me. Not a proper official warning like the plebs get.

It was a feeble telling off followed by very a feeble excuse apology

Multi generational overcrowded households, lack of social distancing between households and poor general health.

Oh, I didn't realise the MP was given a minor rap on the knuckles.

It's not slowing down. I'm in between Birmingham and the Black Country and it seems pretty high here.

Warwickshire, by comparison, has those lower stats, so wondering if the South Birmingham side towards Solihull is faring any better?

Edgbaston Cricket Ground is going to be used as a testing centre I believe, while the Nightingale is expecting patients from next weekend. My PILs live near the airport, so wondering what impact that will have.

www.expressandstar.com/news/health/coronavirus-covid19/2020/04/04/coronavirus-black-country-and-birmingham-death-toll-leaps-by-44-per-cent/

I found the article on the church goers mentioned upthread. It also brought up another possibility for the high mortality rates:

'The source told the newspaper the Black Country's roots as an industrial heartland are believed to have made elderly people in the area vulnerable.

"A lot of these people in their eighties, they worked in heavy industry in the Black Country, full of smog, doing heavy engineering," they told the newspaper.

www.expressandstar.com/news/health/coronavirus-covid19/2020/04/04/coronavirus-black-country-and-birmingham-death-toll-leaps-by-44-per-cent/

Oh, I didn't realise the MP was given a minor rap on the knuckles.

That was the whole point. I am well used to UK "journalism" and how it works. While it's true a police chief did publicly call the MP a twat, that's not an official punishment. Or, to put it another way, if you had been caught deliberately flouting a law designed to protect people, then you would have come out with a criminal record and possibly a fine to boot.

But - as some are learning, and some have known for a long time - it's one law for them, another for us.

Anyway, back to the West Midlands. Maybe it's something in the water ? In all the places I have lived in the UK, I have never had such soft water. Our kettle is 20 years old, and doesn't have the slightest flake of scale, we never have a scale ring in the sinks. And boy, you should see our soap froth up !!!

DGR I find the water hard ha ha.

I have previously lived in a place with soft water.

DGR I find the water hard ha ha.

I guess it depends where you live and where you get your water from. Ours is as Welsh as they come ...

In one part of the region I had soft water. Now it's hard in another part, so yes depends if it's Severn Trent or South Staffs

My aunt used to ask her daughter (they lived a few miles apart, but different suppliers) to bring containers of 'Birmingham water' over as she hated the hard 'Walsall water'.

We are Severn Trent

I used to live in Birmingham
A lot of my family are still there.

It’s really worrying. I wonder if the message is being passed on properly? I know some families have limited English and may not watch the news/read papers/radio etc

Maybe they need local people to run information properly?

Saying that I saw a German doctor still going to church with lots of other people because she said God would protect them in church.

I'm in the region, and have found the daily tracker from Sky News to be helpful in keeping up to speed with the local numbers. They report cases per 100,000 population, so it's easier to get a sense of the relative levels in each area. I'm assuming that the testing isn't at consistent levels across the UK, but instead represents the number of people presenting with significant symptoms in each locality.

With that caveat, Birmingham yesterday appeared on the third page of 15 pages of local authority areas, with a rate of 106.1 testing positive per 100,000 residents. This is lower than most London boroughs and also places like Sheffield (132.1/100,000) and Cumbria (135.8/100,000).

middleager asked about south Birmingham and Solihull rates. Solihull has been steadily climbing in the number of cases from 26 March when it had 29 cases or 15/100,000 (page 7 of 15 pages of local authorities) to yesterday with 183 cases or 88.5/100,000 population and on page 4 of Sky's data.

As people have said, there are plenty of demographic reasons for the West Midlands to be more greatly affected, including overcrowding and industrial workers with respiratory disease. I'd also add in the social factors such as a relatively busy airport until around 3 weeks ago and the transit hub at Birmingham New Street Station mentioned earlier. Both the airport and station see passengers for Cheltenham and Crufts too.

The mosques and other places of worship are closed but some people have been collecting together and worshipping in private houses.

Also a lot of ignorance around, popping to see friends etc.

I live in the West Midlands.

My parents are south Birmingham
When I've been dropping shopping to them the roads are very quiet.

However, heading more inner city Birmingham to work there is far more hustle and bustle. We have been told at work that worship has "gone underground" and there is collective worship in peoples houses/shops.
Someone I work with also has noticed her neighbours all went out and came back with new clothing and haircuts ( Asian community)

Ah the Birmingham water is amazing
I live in Worcestershire now but lived in Birmingham before

I'm forever having to clean my shower screens here because of the hard water. And de-scale the kettle regularly.

That's interesting @CrepuscularCritter.
High rates in London, Sheffield etc are understandable given that these are cities and as such, will have a large volume of people living in a relatively small area of space.
But Cumbria?
What's the explanation/theory for their large number I wonder?

If we’re going with the idea that BAME households often live in more multigenerational house holds, plus higher population over all the West Midlands figure will be higher than Warwickshire because of that. Other than perhaps Leamington spa? The population of Warwickshire is predominantly white and tend not to live in such multi generational families. Plus it’s a much more rural county than the West Midlands which has two very large cities that make up the majority of the county (Birmingham and surrounds and Coventry)

I have friends who work for Warwickshire trusts and their hospital figures are much lower than within my Birmingham trust.
I have friends who also work within another Birmingham trust who are doing much, much worse than my trust ( and we are bad, so no idea how awful it is to work there right now) that hospital is in a very predominately Asian community.

Looking st Sky News.

Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire all have similar levels.

And all are slightly below the English average.

I live just North of Birmingham.

Walsall has a huge Asian population,they live in multi generational families,so difficult for them to practice social distancing.

Then you had Crufts........madness that it went ahead,same thing with Cheltenham.

Makes sense to me that it’s a hotspot.

Cumbria receives thousands of visitors , half term would have been full, as are most weekends