Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 7

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Welcome to thread 7 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.

Was it this thread that was talking about 5 days in work and 10 days off being the best way forward? Does anyone have a link? My school have asked for any ideas on how best to move forward and I thought I might suggest this as the idea behind it seemed quite reasonable!

Today’s number tweet

The testing target has been met with over 120k tests yesterday.

Windflower I know of 2 possible school schedules, if your school can't do fulltime:

1. As in some school grades that have already returned in Germany:
   The class is in shifts, with half in school and half at home online
   The shifts can be morning / afternoon or every other day or week

2. The proposal by an Israeli team, for 4 days on, 10 days (incl WE) off

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.ft.com/content/5c208540-831c-11ea-b6e9-a94cffd1d9bf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.ft.com/content/5c208540-831c-11ea-b6e9-a94cffd1d9bf</a>

"Most infected people are non-infectious for the first three days after infection and are at peak infectiousness at days 4-7.
So a 14-day cycle, that sees people go to work (/school) for four days and then be locked down for 10, would minimise the spread of the disease.
Most of those infected during work days would reach maximum infectiousness during lockdown, reducing the spread.

While those with severe symptoms can be infectious for longer,
they can also be detected by their symptoms, allowing their households to self-quarantine and minimise secondary infections.

Asymptomatic cases infected on workdays would spend the majority of their peak infectious period under lockdown."

Sweden has a much lower population density though than countries like the UK so surely had we followed a "Sweden" style pathway ( assuming people would have abided by it), our death rates would have been much worse than they are currently?

Would it not be a good idea to test a whole town to see how many people really do have the virus? They keep saying that probably 10x the reporter number are infected but haven’t proved this yet. Would it not be useful for them to do this in a town with a medium infection rate and perhaps a population of 100k ish.

Why is the death rate so much higher today?

It includes backdated care home deaths.

Seelow It's not feasible to test an entire town, because of absence, illness, refusal etc as well as resources to test several thousand people

So the usual practice is to take representative samples of a population

I preume there must be antibody tests taking place around the UK , representative samples in different locations (like an exit poll after a Gerneral Election !)

Antibody testing started a couple of weeks ago in Germany, which should have preliminary results later this months
There is another study to repeatedly test the same 100,000 people to check how the infection is proceeding among them
plus extensive testing of another town

Theyve just said in the briefing that antibody testing has started but it hasnt been reported anywhere

@EducatingArti

I think this a bit of a red herring... it doesn’t matter how sparsely populated a country is, it’s the extent to which people physically interact with each other. The proportion of Swedes who lives in Stockholm is higher than the proportion of Brits who live in London for instance.

I've a family member who has been selected for a test sample. I thought it was the 20,000 antibody test sample but he had a throat swab? He says he's part of a sample of 20,000. He's going to be tested regularly. First test was yesterday I think.

Interesting the 4 days on 10 off idea for schools.

How effective do people think the phone app will be?

I think it's worth noting that Sweden is social distancing, there guidelines aren't dissimilar to our regulations. Schools are only half full and everyone who can wfh is doing so. Will the fact that they have an unusually high number of single person households be significant?

NHS Colleagues have been for antibody testing at a centre in Hammersmith so definitely underway in London.

I'm hoping antibody tests are rolled out beyond nhs at some point. I work in a school and it's believed I have had it (if not I was bloody ill with something else that left me struggling to breathe!)
If it's known I have it and it's known you then don't pass it on or become ill it means they will know I can work daily and relieve pressure for staffing.

I think culture plays a big part with the Sweden thing too Derbygerbil and ‘wonderstuff* - interaction generally seems much lower than in the U.K. for example, not least because of more single person households - v unusual for people to have flatmates in the same way as London/NY, as I understand more of a tendency to happily stay home rather than out socialising? My impressions, maybe someone more au fair with Swedish culture could confirm?

Bigchoc you seem to think that Swedish model will be necessary for most European countries eventually but general culture will be likely to create a different outcome, eg your average 24year old Brit/Spaniard is maybe much less likely to happily spend most evenings home alone than a Swede night?

Why is the death rate so much higher today?

Hospital deaths had dropped again.

The population density in Stockholm though is still much less than in our big cities such as London, Manchester, Birmingham.

Sleep The Scandi group of countries have a much lower death rate than countries with similar policies
Sweden without lockdown is comparable to the UK
The other Scandi countries with lockdown have v v low death rates
So we can already get an idea of the difference lockdown makes

However, even if relaxing lockdown restarts exponential infection growth,
some countries may choose to pay the cost in lives, rather than wreck their economy with a 2nd lockdown

If a 2nd lockdown if it doesn't work, then probably every remaining country will be forced to accept the deaths
Vaccine rollout is too far away

Lockdown was a partial pause button,
to give time to build up the health service, mass testing, contact tracing etc and to start improving treatments

Hopefully that time has not been wasted, because we probably can't have it again

The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL @BartlettArchUCL

According to new analysis ....
two thirds of pavements in London are not wide enough for government recommended #socialdistancing

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/news/2020/may/bartlett-research-suggests-most-london-pavements-are-not-wide-enough-social-distancing

.... analysed every street in Greater London and found that only 36% of pavements were at least three metres wide
– the minimum requirement for members of the public to follow social distancing rules.

Of all London boroughs, the City of London has the highest percentage (51%) of streets that meet the minimum requirement of non-road space,

while Hammersmith and Fulham, Wandsworth, Richmond upon Thames and Newham and Haringey all have the lowest percentages (between 26-28%).

The crowds probably make the pavement width irrelevant
(thinking back to my 3 years in London)

Lewis Goodall Retweeted JamesClaytonn@JamesClayton5*

Spot the difference.
The DH quietly dropped the phrase 'tests carried out' from their test reporting.

We now know that at least 40,000 tests included in yesterday's figures are YET to be carried out
[[https://mobile.twitter.com/faisalislam
Faisal Islam]]m@faisalislam*

My colleague @BBCHughPym reports that
Government has included tests sent out to those who booked online but not actually completed,

Govt sources told him it is the only way to count them as it’s hard to track them when swabs are sent back to the labs...🤔

Can i ask a stupid question? I watched the government update today. One graph showed a reduction in hosptial nos from around 17,000 to 15,000 in the past week. I looked at deaths in hospital for the week and the numbers were very similar, maybe 300 of a difference and i only a actually counted 6 days in the week.
So maybe 2000 less on hosital and 1700 died.

I know the no.s each day dont relate to the days but i must be totally wrong in my thinking on this? And have some assumptions wrong.
Can you tell me if this is a completely incorrect assumption to make?
Thanks tell me gently i am a idiot!

I presume you have all heard the roadmap for reopening Ireland? There have been a couple of calls here of at least a whole island of Ireland approach, if now an entire UK + Ireland approach, to try to get out of this mess, but I suspected there's not an asses roar in hell of getting Boris to even talk to Leo about it.

assets.gov.ie/73722/ffd17d70fbb64b498fd809dde548f411.pdf