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.

Checking in, thanks everyone for your work on this, fascinating and reassuring to have a clear resource to follow.

I’ve been trying to compare the COBR slides from yesterday to today. The UK ‘all settings’ line has shifted across? Was yesterday’s a mistake?

I think the fact the government are struggling to test 100k tests a day says a lot really.

The fact people don't need them is great news.

I do think though it'll just be a stick the media beat government with. But the tests are there. If people do t need or want them they won't happen.

Big I've heard that Germany is seeing a sudden rise in cases. Have you any data in this?

weird No, cases and deaths in Germany look to be continuing the downward trend
About 1,000 new cases and 150 deaths daily on average over the last week or so

What has risen is the R0, but that is a theoretical number, calculated with a wide range, so it could be anywhere 0.8-1.1
If cases continue to fall, it must have been under 1.0 a week or so ago

Until / unless we actually see cases increase, imo people here would be very reluctant to reverse measures taken

Hospitals have plenty of PPE and COVID patients are only a tiny % of all patients, see chart

• averaging about 2 per hospital ICU, with 40% spare capacity in the system

There seems far more concern expressed about this in the UK than in Germany,
which looks more like those in the UK advocating a longer lockdown are grabbing at news from anywhere to support that

We cannot stay in lockdown until there is a vaccine,
so everyone is hoping that 80-90% of the economy can be restarted and continue for at least 4 months,
before the buildup to a possibly long winter wave

However, we have been warned to keep up social distancing
and reminded to wear masks / face coverings in shops, taxis, on public transport etc

The main relaxation measures are quite modest:

• smaller shops (< 800m2) of most kinds allowed to open, including bike shops at last
• some grades in schools returning, with shift system to enable half-classes and social distancing

What could change things is the statistics report - for March only ! - expected tomorrow
e.g. a spike in excess deaths that RKI didn't pick up in its hospital+care home daily totals

However, although the German epidemic is probably a week or so ahead of the UK in timing,
I wouldn't expect much drama from March

@sleepwhenidie Italy introduced national lockdown on 9th March when they had 463 deaths.

Italy tried to be a New Zealand with a local lockdown on 25th Feb as soon as the cases in Codogno were uncovered but this did not quell the growth. At this point Italy had 10 deaths. Knowing how the virus has exponential growth and having seen China's struggle to control it they could have taken measures then in the UK but this was when Johnson was talking about taking it on the chin.

By the time the UK locked down on March 23rd deaths in italy had risen to 6,077. So 6k people died in Italy while the UK gov took no action to protect its' citizens from a virus with no treatment.

NZ benefits from smaller population, lower population density and remote location compared to the UK and didn't get its' first case till Feb 28th so perhaps direct comparisons shouldn't be made. But Italy took action with a local lockdown on 25th feb. The UK sat on its' hands till 23rd March knowing it was going to follow Italy's trajectory.

People would take up the tests if they were offered more widely. They could allocate for category x, y and z, and have a back up list for randoms who just want to get tested.

Hi

Does anyone know what the 'in hospital' number today is?

I appreciate the carehome numbers are very important, but I wish they'd give the numbers separately so we could continue to compare the daily totals to what we've been told previously.

Also, 3000 carehome deaths for the month? Did I misheard? That cannot be right, surely it's (sadly) much higher?.

• • • DAILY UPDATE * * * Wednesday APRIL 29th

Total UK cases: 165,221
New UK cases: 4,076
Total UK Deaths: 26,097
New UK Deaths: 765

Think it was 601 @IncrediblySadToo.

I am a bit bemused as to how they got to the figure of 3811 for care homes, are the ONS figures not going to be taken into account?
. I think they said it was for care home deaths that tested positive,i would have thought many were not tested especially at the start. Do death certificates with covid on not count? Surely this is not going to be anaccurate figure? I also think they said that is from begining of march to 28th of april, so are they all included?

I think social distancing will be really hard in schools,

What will the children do in break time? What about a staff room, staff meetings etc?

I think that, if schools reopen, the reality is that there will not be social distancing within them.

It appears to be 578 incredibly looking at the footnote to the tweet. Wish they had stuck to reporting a hospital only figure and maybe added a total deaths figure to the table. Having a day to day comparison was useful (to me at least, I like consistent data reporting)

news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-sharp-rise-in-covid-19-deaths-in-uk-as-care-homes-included-in-total-for-first-time-11980475

hospital deaths;

445 England
83 Scotland
73 Wales

==> 601 GB

Unclear whether the 9 NI death were all in hospital
So UK 610, or a couple less

578 deaths in UK hospitals following the normal method. As it states on the attached. Lower than the last 3 Wednesdays I believe which is the right direction

Oops, then Sky were wrong above

This shows 578 clearer hopefully

larry This is how schools have opened in Germany:

Schools have started returning in stages

First classes to come back to school are:

. 4th grades (final class of primary school),
. 9th grade at Hauptschule, 10th grade at Realschule (both are the final years of secondary non-grammar)
. 12th and 13th grade at grammar schools (exams in the next year or so)

If all goes well, then the remaining grades will return in stages

Class sizes have been reduced to about 10 mostly by splitting into shifts with half at school and half online, then swapping back
e.g. half of the classes in the mornings, other half in the afternoons, or on alternate days

In Germany, there is not normally a drop-off / pick-off crowd

• school starts age 6 and kids have always been expected to go to school on their own, on foot or by bus

This video shows one secondary school returning
Masks are optional for kids & staff

Each child is greeted at the school door and reminded:
. Wash hands first
. Only one person in the loos at a time
. Keep your distance at all times from everyone

https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/coronavirus-maskenpflicht-schulen-aenderungen-100.html

Why are there two different no.s for today? Think this was the same yesterday.

Bigchoc,

Unfortunately my German does not stretch that far (indeed anywhere..).

I can see how a classroom would work but not a break time or a staff room. What about staff having a coffee or snack?

What about Science practical work, both pair work and the teacher helping students?

Also, everyone can behave day 1, but generally people will take more chances as time goes on.

I may be getting confused due to the reporting changes but looking at the Gov data it appears that the addition of care home deaths has created a second peak on 21 April so almost two weeks later than the hospital peak which was 8th April.

The graphs do seem to have a weekly cyclical pattern so perhaps this is based on reported date rather than date of death.

coronavirus.data.gov.uk

What is 765 then, if 578 is the increase in hospital deaths?

Denmark and Iceland are both opening schools with reduced class sizes. I think one of the biggest difficulties in the UK will be that with average class sizes of 30, how do you make classes small enough? Is a class of 15 small enough? If it is then I imagine we'll do half days or alternate days, but that will still impact on parents ability to work. If we need classes as small as 10 its going to be very challenging to organise.

I think that we'll probably have to continue with some home school or self directed work until we can stop distancing. Are we going to be distancing until vaccine?

What is 765 then, if 578 is the increase in hospital deaths?

Hospital and care home deaths reported in last timeframe of 24 hours

I think social distancing will be really hard in schools. What will the children do in break time? What about a staff room, staff meetings etc? I think that, if schools reopen, the reality is that there will not be social distancing within them.

I agree. Based on Swiss recent advice that children can safely hug grandparents, the social distancing may not be necessary. The fact that, to my knowledge, there have been no school-related clusters, or evidence that teachers have a higher infection rate than the general population despite teaching children of key workers, is additional circumstantial evidence to support this. We’ll see, and clearly we need to be cautious.

I don't think any data on teachers has been collected? When we stopped testing we missed a huge opportunity. Even if we weren't able to test everyone, if we'd kept up testing in a few areas we'd have much better data on how it spreads among younger people.