Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 9

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Welcome to thread 9 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.

It was just the prompt that flashes up o the screen; I wondered if it was in anyway linked to your local area. Seems not!

I didn’t get it, I’m south west. But I did get an email a few days ago from them asking me to take part in swab survey if I got ill.

I am concerned about a second wave approaching. We do seem to have plateaued and not seen numbers fall as they should be by now and if we are plateauing then I fear there is a possibility that cases may rise again.

@NowImLivinInExeter no evidence got weaker but no evidence got stronger either

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.108506v1

Can someone please explain why plateauing suggests a second wave?

A question, if I may, for the well informed posters on here ...

The UK hospital deaths announced today were 131, but the total in all settings was 176 - which seems a bit odd to me since the community and care home deaths (Pillar 2, I think they're called?) often add a great deal more to the total

Does anyone else wonder if there's another lag in the reporting and that we'll soon see another "correction", or is it likely that the "community deaths" really have fallen that much?

if things continued to improve then eventually the virus would disappear unless people brought it in from abroad. A plateau would mean the new cases infected were just in balance, so not increasing but not declining either. So any change - like more people returning to work - could mean the virus spreading again.

Today admissions went up quite a bit, that is cause to suspect there might be a second wave. However we had a few days when they were higher then a drop, it could drop back tomorrow.

Any second wave is probably going to be a lot smaller - I worry about the third one.

@puzzledandpissedoff

This is deaths reported by the 2 sources by day - as you can see, reporting cycles are all over the place. You really can't tell anything from the day to day data. (graph credit to @rp131 on Twitter)

Thanks, Patricia, but good grief ... they "felt" all over the place to me, but I didn't realise it was as bad as that

Now hospitals are starting to reopen, is it possible that hospital admission of Covid cases are not necessarily primarily for Covid but for unrelated condition? All patients are tested on admission so could be admitted for emergency but are Covid positive so are included in Covid admissions because they would have to be treated on Covid positive wards.

it's possible that some of the increased admissions are with covid rather than for covid, but the combination with deaths levelling off doesnt look good.

The ONS has tweeted they are publishing info on the non covid deaths tomorrow.

Interesting article on T-cells and coronavirus. Some scientists think that exposure to some previous coronaviruses allows T-cells that react to covid. These would not test positive for antibodies but have protection and could be up to one-third of people.

science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6493/809.full

May explain some of the discrepancies in official UK figures for number of tests / people tested

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/04/almost-30000-invalid-uk-coronavirus-tests-had-to-be-redone

Tens of thousands of Britons had to be retested for coronavirus after the government sent their swabs to the US.

Nearly 30,000 tests were found to be invalid after being flown out following problems at a UK laboratory last month.

The 29,500 voided tests were among a batch of 67,000 sent to the US following technical issues at the privately run Randox laboratory in Northern Ireland.

It emerged last month that the government had to send 50,000 tests abroad owing to processing problems in the UK.

This is interesting, from the Telegraph if you have access; www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/04/coronavirus-infections-england-wales-hit-peak-days-lockdown/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter&fbclid=IwAR2TOK6Ds7ClDfQ8xbEUv9qrT9HQscd2DfornOo_P_wYLECbuuVq0PZ3LL8#Echobox=1591291219

The paper is here arxiv.org/pdf/2005.02090.pdf

But what he shows, through analysis of deaths, is that peak infections in the UK were actually reached several days before lockdown - that the social distancing measures people were abiding by then seemed to have done an effective job in reducing infection.

Which would bode well for keeping infections down as we unlock, as long as we can maintain a similar level of distancing. So no big indoor events, lots of hand hygiene, reducing levels on public transport, but no/little restrictions on family life.

From eye's link, looks more hopeful for vaccine:

"She and other scientists caution that the results do not mean people who have recovered from COVID-19 are safe from reinfection.

But they do raise hopes that a vaccine could give lasting protection against the virus.
To spark production of antibodies, a vaccine needs to stimulate helper T cells
...
The studies don't show people with this cross-reactivity are less likely to become ill from COVID-19."

Patricia Sounds like how we are opening up in Germany atm, with infections & deaths continuing to decrease
BUT also
German virologists agree we must continue to ban large crowded outdoor events too, e.g. carnivals, sports stadia,
due to infection risk from shouting, singing etc

Ah yes, I can see that, I see.

The problem here may be getting back to that point - we seem to have lots of people who are disregarding the rules thinking it's all over and simultaneously lots of people terrified to leave the house. Some how we need to get to a sustainable point in the middle!

Well I'm at peak furiousness.

I've commented all along about how dd (front line nurse) and her friends have never been tested, that they've all worked with Covid patients, that they've all at various times had various symptoms - temperature, sore throat, cough, feeling generally shit - but never "bad enough" for testing.

Well, now they've introduced antibody testing and every single one of them who has been tested have come back as positive. So they've all had Covid at some stage.

dd has been working from the start - from end February - between two wards, a Covid CCU and a "non-Covid" surgical ward. For the whole of March she had no PPU, from end March she's had mask and apron only in surgical ward. So she has more than likely infected patients as well as saving them

She has asked to be tested on four different occasions, all refused.

She is still waiting for an antibody test, the last of her friends and colleagues to get one. NOT ONE SINGLE ONE OF THEM HAS COME UP AS ANTIBODY NEGATIVE. THEY HAVE ALL HAD COVID, NONE OF THEM WAS EVER DIAGNOSED WITH IT.

Health care staff have been carrying the virus for months, without PPE to protect their patients. I really, really hope there is an inquiry into this; dd has kept notes, she's waiting for someone to send them to.

That’s tragic and so negligent. I can understand that widespread testing for frontline staff may not have been have been available very early in the pandemic but it should have been prioritised and available months ago

Horrifying negligence, NewAccount
Youngish staff, especially female, who didn't suffer very serious symptoms, but may well have infected vulnerable patients
Sounds similar to staff in care homes probably infecting the residents.

Yep, she rang me tonight absolutely distraught. She's been coping with this for 3 months, without a break and has finally cracked. She kept saying "we've probably caused more deaths than we've stopped". I didn't know what to say

She's absolutely drained by this. I don't think she'll stay nursing; she's 23, and a wonderful, caring person, but has been destroyed.

Oh I am so sorry to hear that @ corona, that really is awful. Must be so incredibly hard for her. Dont know what to say so though woefully inadequate.

If anyone wants to see what a second wave looks like you should look at Iran.

They look very obviously in their second wave.

The rationing of testing (unnecessarily as testing capacity has increased) will almost certainly be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, failure in terms of the management of COVID in the U.K in my view.

The hangover of the early days when you couldn’t get a test no matter what is still there and people are still not Coming forward and getting tested when they should be.

The very limited symptom list (together with an ingrained belief that you can’t access testing in many) means we have missed, and are still missing, large numbers of infections. I suspect that it is this which accounts for the slow decline in overall infections, not people sitting about on the beach.

We are still not testing at capacity or anywhere close most days. Frontline staff need to be tested if they have any symptom
of illness at all in my view and probably weekly in any event.

I also wonder about the antibody sampling. Does it factor in the fact that certain groups are likely to have a much higher incidence of infection? Or just say we’ve tested 1000 people, 50 of them were positive so we estimate 5%?

Whilst I don’t think we are missing herd immunity I do wonder if a large percentage of the groups most likely to be infected (and subsequently cause infections) will already have antibodies which would presumably have an impact.

@NewAccountForCorona your daughter has done nothing wrong. Any failures here are not hers, I hope she is able to see that in time.