Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 8

[Barracker]

Welcome to thread 8 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.

Oak great graph! Is that reporting on same day or Italy's deaths 14/16 days ahead of us?

Barraker hope things are ok.

Millicent thankyou. That's from 3 deaths so comparison of curve I was wondering about. Ot seems to confirm our peak was more exponential and higher in total numbers yet we have decreased quicker and have come down to Italy's curve again quicker.

The reason I was pondering this data is that we seem to have a much slower release from lockdown planned than Italy and also Spain (although they had a stricter lockdown it would seem) so these comparisons with discussions of total excess deaths will provide some greater analysis of how this epidemic works

Neuro I also work in a school (special!) and my concern is that we cannot social distance (pupils wouldn't have a clue about that concept!) and therefore we should looking at PPE as gov guidelines state this where you can't distance.
I had union send questionnaire yesterday and one thing I said was rather than a standard 15 per class it should be a No per sq m in classroom and max of 15.

“[The figures are] actually the seventh-highest weekly total since this data set started in 1993 so we have had four out of the top seven weeks in the last four weeks”.

I can't be bothered to look at the data since 1993, but I would note that these data are by registration date, whereas in the long run (say at year end 2021) you'd want to publish a record of deaths by date of death. The point is there is a LARGE spike of deaths in January caused by people dying post-Christmas, infectious diseases, and then that spike is compressed into the second or third week of January by the effect of the bank holidays

So in terms of the biggest weeks deaths by occurrences it might well be we are higher than #7 because the week 2/3 January figures are spiked by bank holidays

Its yes mine is also a special school! Yet to hear anything from slt as it's such a complex challenge. I was reminded of the taxis yesterday...

The thing is our class sizes are always less than 15, though can have more adults understandably. However, few can sit at desks all day. We may have equipment for sensory input etc too. Certainly toys. Many don't do sit down worksheets etc.

Interesting re square footage.

Viruses do spread quickly in our school every year. The Cambridge virologist on bbc yesterday morning was bang on about things spreading quickly with small children and Sen is no different, his opinion was children can spread it. I don't know where the science stands with that yet (I know about the BMJ article but it seems flimsy.) I can't see how other coronaviruses are infectious among the young and not this one.

@Ellle
Link to search for stats by postcode:
www.covidlive.co.uk/

Neuro our EHT emailed to say they are working on it, it's complex and rather than share thoughts now she'd rather say there is a plan in progress and then they'll share it. I wouldn't want to be a school leader right now anymore than I'd have wanted to be a hospital ceo or care home manager the past 2 months.

Yes we have classes way below 15. 9 is our largest but it's usually 6-8 and then 3-4 adults. But that's without any chance of social distancing! Add into that lack of hygiene due to cognitive ability and it's a hot bed for germs without the risk of covid.

We'd nearly had to close the school in the autumn due to an outbreak of tonsillitis and norovirus which had hit staff badly.

On another note, Dh blithely said they were testing the sewerage systems for virus levels and using to add to the data for areas; does anyone know any more?

Numbers of new people coming into residential homes have fallen significantly... Whether that becomes a long lasting trend is another matter

Mums care home didn't accept transfers, or visitors right from the very start, actually even before the lockdown, they had effectively self isolated. Of the local care homes I know of, friends parents in situ, none have Covid, so the 70% without Covid figure from pp, seems very likely. I have noted this on other threads, and it seems that those homes with local authority contracts were effectively forced to take in transfers, those who are completely private were able to set their own rules. A couple of old folk have died recently at mums care home, not of Covid. They aren't taking in anyone new from the community either. This will be interesting from a business point of view, if they start to lose too many customers, and don't replace them, how do they keep going financially?

I wish there was some way to find out how many positive cases there have been in children/adults in schools, hubs and childcare...

Yes, SHoots When it comes to comparisons with previous years, we should really stick to comparing for the same weeks
COVID may have caused 2020 to have all the top 8 weeks for the mid-March - mid-May period

I was hoping also that we would soon have the date of death, which is much more useful, not just of registration
but from your last post this could take several months ?

When health authorities so desperately need data, a "black hole" in unacceptable.

Is this part of the reason for sending 50,000 tests for processing in the USA ?
(which in itself would add delay)

https://www.hsj.co.uk/coronavirus/exclusive-test-data-from-commercial-labs-going-into-black-hole/7027619.article

Data on the outcome of tens of thousands of tests carried out outside the NHS is ‘disappearing into a data black hole’,
making it harder for local organisations to respond to the spread of coronavirus in their area.

RKI (German public health)

They say they don't expect to see the trend increasing here again

• which agrees with Denmark public health assessment for all European countries coming out of lockdown atm

Obviously they are monitoring closely, because it is new territory how to use R0,
with such low case numbers and with local lockdowns

• for several days, new cases have been below 800 and deaths well below 100

The mass testing and mass contact tracing enables local hotspots to be locked down promptly,
BUT
with people being infectious before syptoms, there is still some risk of exponential growth restarting more widely

• a risk the authorities have chosen to take, in order to restart the economy and something approaching normal life.

Merkel's criteria for local lockdowns, agreed with the 16 federal states, is 50 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants within 7 days.

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/NeuartigesCoronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-05-12-de.pdf??__blob=publicationFile

Outbreaks
After COVID-19 outbreaks in six retirement homes in the district of Greiz, Thuringia, the reported incidence in this district in the past 7-days has been decreasing to 54 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

In the district of Sonneberg, an increase of the reported incidence in the past 7-days to 53 cases per 100,000 inhabitants has been observed.

Since the end of April, COVID-19 outbreaks were also reported in meat processing plants in Baden-Wuerttemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein,
with case numbers ranging from 100 to 350 (each)

Estimation of the reproduction number (R)
....
The reproduction number, R, is defined as the mean number of people infected by a case.

R can only be estimated based on statistical analyses such as nowcasting and not directly extracted from the notification system.
.....
The number of incident cases estimated using the nowcasting approach is presented as a moving 4-day average to compensate for random effects of individual days....

With this approach, the point estimate of R for a given day is estimated as the quotient of the number of incident cases on this day divided by the number of incident cases four days earlier.

The current estimate is R= 0.94 (95% prediction interval: 0.79 - 1.10)
and is based on electronically notified cases as of 12/05/2020, 12:00 AM.

The estimate of the reproduction number R has been slightly above 1 in the last few days,
which shows that the decline in the number of new cases we have observed in recent weeks has levelled off and may be reaching a plateau.

So far we do not expect to see an increasing trend again.

The slowdown in the decline in new cases is also related to local outbreaks,
for example in the vicinity of slaughterhouses.

Moreover, since case numbers in Germany are slowly decreasing overall,
these outbreaks have a greater impact on the value of the reproduction number R than if total case numbers were higher.

Overall, therefore, the development of the number of new cases must be observed in the next few days in order to rule out a merely temporary slowdown in the decline.

Statistical uncertainties are represented by the prediction interval.

"Outbreaks
After COVID-19 outbreaks in six retirement homes in the district of Greiz, Thuringia, the reported incidence in this district in the past 7-days has been decreasing to 54 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

In the district of Sonneberg, an increase of the reported incidence in the past 7-days to 53 cases per 100,000 inhabitants has been observed."
Bigchoc, does that mean these districta have locked down again?

@NeurotrashWarrior re the testing of waste water I believe in another country (can’t remember where, sorry, maybe France?) there was evidence that there was presence of the virus in waste water in area before there were any or many cases being recorded there, suggesting that it might be a way of predicting where there were people in the first stages of asymptomatic illness.

@NeurotrashWarrior here you go, it was Paris!
www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/coronavirus-found-paris-sewage-points-early-warning-system#

Stability of SARS-CoV-2 on environmental surfaces and in human excreta

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.20094805v1

Also Beijing

Can someone explain while the deaths are creeping back up already?

The deaths aren't really creeping up. You need to look at the rolling figure over 7 days to see the bigger picture.

The numbers on weekends and bank holidays are always lower. The days following always show a spike, especially after a long weekend.

The number today was lower than last week and there's been a sustained, slow fall over the last week as a whole.

Oh good, thank you!! I need to stay off daily mail comments section😩

Hello everyone - thanks very much for this thread; I've been dipping in and out for many weeks.

Apologies if this has recently been covered, but can anyone interpret for me the recent data on hypertension and severity of CV19?

This study found that there was no major increased risk of a severe outcome for people treated with the various forms of medication for hypertension (ACE-inhibitors, ARBs etc).

But has it therefore found that there is no increased risk of a severoutcome for people who have hypertension overall, regardless of which medication they are on?
statement from the International Society of Hypertension seems to say that people with hypertension are in fact under-represented in the group who have severe outcomes, given the proportion of older people in the general population who have hypertension (see note 2.)

I think we'd need to know [% of people with severe outcomes who have hypertension] and [% of people who have hypertension], but once I think about whether age needs to be factored in, my head explodes!

Thanks in advance for any light you can shed.

Bit random... But can we catch it from being in the sea then if it is in waste water...?

Arti Yes, those districts met the criteria for local lockdown, so they are back to full lockdown