Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 6

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Welcome to thread 6 of the daily updates.

Resource links:
Worldometer UK page
Financial Times Daily updates and graphs
HSJ Coronavirus updates
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre
NHS England stats, including breakdown by Hospital Trust
Covidly.com to filter graphs using selected data filters
ONS statistics for CV related deaths outside hospitals, released weekly each Tuesday

Thank you to all contributors for their factual, data driven, and civil discussions.

Thanks, shoot those are very useful charts

So deaths of Asian patients are proportional
The BMA say doctors are dying disproportionately in BAME, but didn't do an ethnic breakdown

www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/10/uk-coronavirus-deaths-bame-doctors-bma

BAME patients also at higher risk
Mixed race too, but such a small number could be distorted v easily by a few cases

Anecdotally, but 10-12 years ago my late mum needed a care home and then a nursing home in Berkshire
There was only 1 BAME person in the care home and none in the nursing home
Each had about 50 residents
Several on staff, of course

It's frankly shit of The Guardian to claim that 'white people' are dying at a lower rate and then to ignore the fact that white people are not a single ethnic group in the UK.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/racial-inequality-in-britain-found-a-risk-factor-for-covid-19

A really poor piece of reporting

Shoots Are the non-British white just EE or also Irish in the 2nd chart ?

I recall that in the US Chinese are the richest ethnicity, and are showing low infection rates in NY compared to other races. It's likely poverty, not having a job that you can do from home etc that is more important than ethnicity, which should be largely neutral

Big Choc my data source doesn't break out Irish and EE by LA, so it's both. But the EE population is many times bigger than Irish population so it doesn't matter much. The deaths in the NHS are split out into Irish and Other White but I've grouped them

Basingstoke Hospital developed a 20 minute covid test, but theres obviously been issues rolling it out/mass producing it as doesn't seem to be being widely used.

Shoots East Europeans might not form a particularly high % of the non-white Brits aged 70+
which is why I wondered about many of those deaths being of Irish people

They seem to have about the same poor Vit D levels as white Brits

i.e. 30-60% have low levels, same as Brits, Italians, French, Spanish
It's only the Scandi countries where

Polish population of the United Kingdom - UK Parliament
researchbriefings

Age-structure of the Polish population of the UK, Q1 2016 In Q1 2016

around 69% of people born in Poland were aged 25-49

compared with around 34% of the UK population as a whole.

Around 25% of people born in Poland were aged 30-34, compared with 7% of the UK population

An Irish Times article from March www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/britain-s-shrinking-ageing-irish-population-1.3817868 indicates that in 2018 there were 380,000 Irish born people in the UK, one third of them in London and 42% over the age of 65.

So the white Irish population would be over-represented in that age group, especially in London.

Australia has kept its number of new cases per day below 20 for a while now. Same in New Zealand. They have a total of 80 and 8 deaths respectively

We've had 18 deaths in NZ. Most are from 2 affected care homes.

The Metropolitan Mayor of Greater Manchester has said that the peak will not reach Greater Manchester until the first week of May. Currently there are less than 1.500 official recorded deaths in Greater Manchester (let's call it 3.000) out of a population of approx 2.5 Million. Can you look into this please. If true, this would make Greater Manchester well behind the majority of the country. Seems odd given that Greater Manchester includes the city of Manchester, a large city, international airport, massively diverse and so on.

Has anyone seen a list where they have the R0 number by country?

There is an article in today’s Times (I know - a newspaper) giving details about how Tim Spector, based on Covid tracking ap from Kings College, believes virus was circulating in Uk in January.

@ShootsFruitAndLeaves Just to offer local context to the NW Salford/Manchester comparison in your graph on page 23. Salford is not a culturally diverse city. Vast majority of residents are white working class. The city has huge issues with poverty and health both physical and mental. There are pockets of gentrification around Salford quays but nevertheless, the city is extremely deprived and many locals have argued for years that the council leaders are let's say not as good as they could be. Also, large hospital and I believe an over-representation of care homes. (Perhaps needed at younger ages due to poor health in the city). Further, just knowing the area well, I suspect very high rates of smoking, excess alcohol intake and other risky behaviours

There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.

What does this mean for a vaccine? A very intelligent friend in nhs nuclear physics said blithely that a vaccine isn't possible as this will keep mutating as is essentially like the common cold. And we all just have to let it run through. (He's currently v depressed so was a little eeyore.) the Antibodies there don't last long hence we catch them again he said. Dh thinks there will be it's just no one has bothered or needed to spend the money on it before as the common cold for most is just a common cold. I feel it'll end up like the flu vaccine with different versions each year.

Can anyone who is even a little scientifically knowledgeable comment?!

Having studied and lived in Salford for 9 years I agree.
I still have lots of friends in the area of Manchester/Salford across to Bolton etc and (anecdote alert) of the 8 households I am still in regular touch with 6 have had the Covid virus (it seemed ironic at the time that British news was full of Italy's bodies-in-the-streets hell, and I knew nobody affected personally, while in the UK I knew lots of people in three different areas of the UK with the virus)
Doesn't Salford itself have one of the lowest life expectancies in general? I'm sure it used to.

Re a vaccine, I have read that the mutation rate is low, so that's not a problem. It mutates much slower than flu.
However immunity to colds and coronaviruses don't last long (months rather than years) so that could be a problem

@NeurotrashWarrior the common cold is many different viruses, only some of which are coronaviruses. There are currently 4 main coronaviruses (6 excluding the current one, but including SARS & MERS) which go through the population each year and immunity doesn't last, we all catch them over & over. Antibodies to these are cross reactive in current tests btw, which is why they are no good at the moment. A friend of mine who works in the area believes that this will be a 5th one that comes round each year. All have the potential to kill a small percentage of the vulnerable population.
It's possible that a vaccine might produce a better, longer lasting immune response than natural infection, but no-one knows yet.

Blood plasma treatment seems to be working which would indicate at least a short term effect from antibodies in fighting an infection?

Indeed, they should as they are neutralising antibodies, but this is to help clear the infection, not give lasting immunity.

Just thinking out loud here, but does a vaccine have to be long-acting?

I mean, in an ideal world, it would be. But if the main goal is to get R0 down under 1 for long enough for this to fizzle out, then even if it gave immunity for a few months, it would be a massive help.

If (big if) you could vaccinate a very large proportion (say 80%) of the population over a short period of time, then have a sort of lockdown-lite for a couple of months, plus heavy-duty testing and contact-tracing, plus masks, etc, is it not likely that we could get infection rates down super-low - to the point they could be managed on a long-term basis with testing and contact-tracing?

For highly vulnerable groups (e.g. frontline NHS staff and those in care homes) could you re-vaccinate every few months? I'm guessing there are risks associated with that, but possibly lower risks than catching covid.

Coronavirus vaccines for animals are given as yearly boosters. It may be that people in vulnerable groups need a yearly covid booster when they get their flu jabs.

Well for the person who wanted to keep politics out, whether you focus more resources on a vaccine or medications that relieve symptoms is the crux. Depends on who sits on what committee, who gets funding and who is listened to or believed as regards which model of infection spread.

The Oxford group are using an different virus wearing a sort of “coronavirus jacket” for their vaccine. The base virus generally produces a strong and longer lasting immune response so the hope is that the effect of the vaccine will be greater than the effect of catching the virus in terms of immunity. Obviously it has to work though!