Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 7

[Barracker]

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.

Has anyone else noted that less healthcare workers have died, as a percentage of that workforce, than the population at large, despite lack of PPE and additional viral load.

I hadn’t... fascinating!

Has that been normalised for age though? As most people in NHS will be under 70

Any ideas why London’s hospitalisation have falling far sooner and faster than other areas... I appreciate that Londoners may have taken action of their own volition sooner, but given the scale of the differences this surely can’t be the only factor.

Has that been normalised for age though? As most people in NHS will be under 70

Of course... very good point.

The number of healthcare workers who have died would need to be compared to numbers who die 'ordinarily' to find the excess deaths.

Re London isn’t it sheer density of population, ie so actual numbers are bigger compared to other regions? So a graph showing % per population would look different? Or so that what you are looking at and I’m thinking of numbers graph?

I’d also hazard a guess that once you get tube usage right down (as we have), the effect on infection rate is very dramatic

And buses of course

Any ideas why London’s hospitalisation have falling far sooner and faster than other areas...

Patrick Vallance mentioned at one of his conferences that R0 in London is lower than in the rest of the country (0.5-0.7 vs 0.6-0.9). While it is true that the vast majority of Londoners do stick to the lockdown rules, I am amazed that the public transport (tube) situation has not pushed R0 higher.

My personal hypothesis is that ~15% of the London population have already been infected and developed C19 antibodies. This percentage of immunity would start having impact on R0. I guess we will know with certainty when we see first results of antibody testing.

I don’t think it makes sense to compare healthcare workers, who come into contact every day with (possibly multiple) people who are likely to be infected, with the general population, who don’t.

'My personal hypothesis is that ~15% of the London population have already been infected and developed C19 antibodies. This percentage of immunity would start having impact on R0. I guess we will know with certainty when we see first results of antibody testing.'

I agree, I think the most likely thing is the increasing number of people with immunity. But I wouldn't bet on any particular figure and I don't think antibody tests are going to give us a simple answer soon because as far as I understand antibody tests aren't the whole picture - people can be immune but test negative because they haven't finished making the antibodies, and other parts of the immune system can be involved in fighting it off.

Winter that infection rate being higher in London would make sense. Again, literally millions of people crammed onto tubes when the virus was rife must have put R through the roof - similarly (mostly) eliminating that would bring it down rapidly.

I wonder if Londoners are (on average) taking lockdown more seriously than other parts of the country, as a result of the high number of cases early on in the pandemic. Everyone I know here is pretty much respecting the rules (apart from maybe meeting the odd friend or family member for a walk), whereas there seems to be more variability and more impatience with the restrictions in other parts of the country. (Needless to say this is a totally anecdotal view and may be unfounded.)

Also I wonder if London has a higher proportion of professional/administrative jobs which can be done from home (again, am just speculating).

Numbers still looking pretty high for the UK, no?

Is 621 the final number? If so it's 200 down from this time last week, so that doesn't look too bad.

England hospital deaths reported last saturday 711 today 370 is a good guide to compare and see where its going, the headline figures including care homes etc makes it seem worse.

Apologies if this has already been posted but Elsevier (who publish the Lancet and lots of other clinical resources etc) have launched a hub of open access info on COVID-19. Mainly for those on the frontline and researchers - thought it might be of interest to some here: covid-19.elsevier.health/

Dadnotamum72 - that's true. I remember checking Worldometer when France and more recently, Belgium, included all their "out of hospital" deaths, I was really shocked at the increase in their reported figures.

With deaths of NHS workers wouldn't you need to consider if they have had any contact with Covid patients? Not everyone is on the front line, I know one who is working on a Covid ward and one who is mainly in an office in the "safe" area of the hospital as she is vulnerable. Both NHS but very different Covid experience and exposure.

This graph is really interesting and proves that the imperial college model is highly inaccurate and grossly overestimated the deaths.

www.aier.org/article/imperial-college-model-applied-to-sweden-yields-preposterous-results/

The Swedish model laid out its predicted death and hospitalization rates for competing policy scenarios in a series of graphs. According to their projections (shown below in blue), the current Swedish government’s response – if permitted to continue – would pass 40,000 deaths shortly after May 1, 2020 and continue to rise to almost 100,000 deaths by June.

The most severe of the lockdown strategies they considered was supposed to cut that number to between 10-20,000 by May 1st while preserving hospital capacity – provided that the Swedish government changed course by April 10th and imposed a policy similar to the rest of Europe. In its most optimistic scenario, the model predicted that this change would reduce total deaths from 96,000 to under 30,000 by the end of June.

So how is the model’s projection performing? Sweden’s government stayed the course with its milder mitigation strategy. As of April 29th, Sweden’s death toll from COVID-19 stands at 2,462, and its hospitals are nowhere near the projected collapse.

When we compare Sweden to its Scandinavian / Nordic neighbours,
then Sweden has several times the death rate, even normalised wrt population

Many times the current UK death rate would not be something a UK government could accept

• • • DAILY UPDATE * * * Friday May 1st

Total UK cases: 177,454
New UK cases: 6,201
Total UK Deaths: 27,510
New UK Deaths: 739

• • • DAILY UPDATE * * * Saturday May 2nd

Total UK cases: 182,260
New UK cases: 4,806
Total UK Deaths: 28,131
New UK Deaths: 621

Germany, France, Spain etc decided to lockdown before any Imperial prediction - because of what was happening in Italy

The other countries around the world locked down because they saw the deaths in their neighbours and wanted to avoid this

Countries listened to their own experts, made their own decisions about how best civil society, the economy - and the government - could get through this 1st wave of COVID

Most decided they needed a pause button that lockdown provided,
to flatten the curve, to build up their health services to cope and to learn more about treating / coping with such a new and dangerous disease

The UK may think everyone was hanging on the opinion of one team from a British College,
but that's a very egocentric view of the world

Continuing fall
Lockdown has worked