Explain to me please!

[Soundslikeduck]

Corona related: I am still curious about our local situation, so they closed a school near to us on 3rd March, closed a doctors surgery at same time due to a student and parent being infected after a ski trip to northern Italy in half term, both confirmed. The school was reopened a week later so all those students (about 1000) were still wandering around along with their families yet the infection rate in our area is still quite low compared to the rest of the uk. Obviously we’re all now in lockdown but I don’t understand why there are not more cases in my area.
I really don’t understand it??

👍

You can have it and carry it, without showing symptoms. It's called being 'asymptomatic'. You can also have it really mildly & just feel run down & fluey.

Only people being taken to hospital are being tested, so the numbers of tests, and therefore confirmed cases, could be very low, even in a population where much larger numbers of people have been infected but not needed hospitalisation. The virus seems to manifest differently in children, so infections among those schoolchildren might not have been recognised as CV19. The numbers are also very behind in being reported, up to several weeks, so may not reflect how things actually are.

Thank you, but surely the cases of infection would be greater now considering the first confirmed case was on 3rd March?

but surely the cases of infection would be greater now considering the first confirmed case was on 3rd March?

Unless the whole population was tested you'd have no idea. Nobody around us is being tested unless they're admitted to hospital; plenty of people I know have had symptoms that could accurately be diagnosed as Covid-19 and it's likely that plenty of people in your area have had it but followed guidelines and self isolated to ensure others were safe. Those numbers of people who've self-isolated because of presumed-Covid-19 aren't being tracked at all.

Thanks. I do think I may have had it, as have many of my friends/family back around 3rd -10th March but who knows

Churston Ferrars? They flew the mother and son up to Newcastle I think. So an isolated case caught early.

We've moved this to the Coronavirus topic now, @Soundslikeduck

Yes, but they were in the school/ doctors for a week before that

@Soundslikeduck

Your area is estimated has having 2.86% of the population with symptomatic COVID-19, so in line with much of the country, according to data collection from Kings College, London:

covid.joinzoe.com/data

It's a bit higher in neighbouring areas (3.815).

Possible reasons why:

1. It could be that there was only the one family who were tested that brought the virus to the area whereas other places may not have had any identified cases because of the original testing criteria (travel to very specific places or contact with someone who has tested positive) but actually had multiple infected people bring the virus to the town a the same time.

1. Having an early identified case could have modified people's behaviour in the area in a way that slowed the spread, while other parts of the country carried on as normal. I know from anecdotal evidence that many older people in the area were isolating long before lockdown, nursing homes closed their doors, some people took their children out of school.

1. Factors that will increase contact and transmission, like the use of public transport, multiple HMOs or multigenerational households are lower than cities etc.

1. It's a (small) unitary authority so it is reported separately from the rest of the region and many people that attend school or work there live outside the unitary authority so would be reported as cases in a different area, even if they most likely caught the virus at school or work.