How come other areas are lagging behind London in terms of the peak?

[Strangerthanstrange]

I just heard on the update that other areas are lagging behind London in terms of the peak? Surely they should be the same or better as we entered lockdown at the same time and London had more cases than the rest of us. Esp us in the North. Or is the reduction due to something else? Like the weather improving. Similar to how flu cases drop as we come into spring.

Because London was a hotspot.

And it spread outwards. Like Madrid was. And Lombardia in Italy. It starts in one place then people carry it outwards. Incubation anything up to 21 days.

London is where most visitors arrive. It is densely populated.
It will take a couple of weeks at least to see how things go elsewhere.

London was a hotspot, has more international airports and higher density of population.

There's a huge job of analysis and investigation to be done when this is over. We won't know the definitive reasons for quite some time imo.

But if other areas had a much smaller percentage of cases and the lockdown made the difference that does not make sense! We are nearly 5 weeks down the line. And the incubation is usually 5 days, 21 days is an outlier. Other areas should have turned the curve quicker and easier.

That isn't what he said. He's reiterated, saying that a number of places are at the same rate as London.

Where are you getting regional statistics OP? I'd like to see them but have only seen national ones reported in the news.

There’s a big assumption that we’ve hit peak.

I’ll be looking at rates in the upcoming weeks. Good weather + bank hols + bending the rules + lockdown fatigue = ?

Also, I think people will be mislead and too focused by the idea of death rate falling = out of the woods. Even if it drops, that’s still a lot of people becoming infected and dying.

Slides and datasets from today’s press conference. Hospital cases are given by region
www.gov.uk/government/publications/slides-and-datasets-to-accompany-coronavirus-press-conference-23-april-2020

There was another thread that basically said that London was strongly socially distancing many weeks before lockdown , someone claimed their firm started working from home in February, and many schools had unusually low attendance

More distancing sooner leads to declining infections earlier

I think I get what you are saying and I agree OP.

The first explosion of cases happened in London, followed by Birmingham, and when we entered lockdown lots of other areas had not yet got nearly as bad. The lockdown was brought in at the same time throughout the country and has kind of (incompletely and imperfectly) frozen us all where we were on the curve.

This does not mean we should be expecting less affected areas to carry on and still have a bad peak as lockdown measures are eased. That would be a shocking failure.

Lockdown doesn't do anything in itself, it just buys time. It's like the story of the little Dutch boy who spent the whole night with his finger in the dyke - the villagers still had to come along the next day and mend it properly.

Areas with fewer cases could come out of lockdown earlier because it will be easier to put in place the things that are needed to properly get to grips with this virus - finding, testing and isolating every case, tracing and quarantining every contact.

I'm puzzled why the South West has relatively fewer cases/deaths.

I live in one of the London hotspots and people were definitely getting worried prior to lockdown. Schools started to close the week before. You can see transport in London starting to drop off prior to lockdown.