Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 10

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 10 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

We welcome factual, data driven, and civil discussions from all contributors 💐

Thank you @Piggywaspushed

Does anyone know when the Zoe app updates its figures? It looks like it was Weds last week. However, it could be figures to Weds and updated on the Thursday.

I meant the daily cases. Last week they dropped by 47% (39%in England) to 4900, hoping to see that continuing this week or at least remaining stable.

Patricia Considering the long lockdown and low UK deaths,
I can't really understand why lockdown hasn't been seriously relaxed
and a firm plan discussed with head teacher reps for the return of ft schools in September

Maybe because Whitty, Vallance - and some of the govt - know more about the state of tracking and testing than we do
and have little confidence in its reliability ?

Maybe because the NHS has too little spare capacity if cases rise exponentially again
and they are not confident of spotting this in the limited time available to tighten up again.
(Merkel has far more leeway with health service capacity, but also much better tracking systems to rely on prompt warning)

Maybe re schools, because BJ always wants to be liked and hasn't the bottle to face down nervous teachers and parents

• after he spent weeks terrifying them about COVID instead of calm explanations Also refuses to pump in extra money for more sinks, deep cleans etc

These reasons are all shameful, tbh, a comprehensive failure of public service planning and governance
Not the fault of teachers, parents or the wider public

BJ has repeated so many times that he "followed the science" (which he ironically did) that now he doesn't have the guts to publicly override SAGE advice. Of course, epidemiologists will have a natural bias to focus on minimising the spread at all costs but the government should be making decisions based on a wide variety of factors (including economic considerations).

I can only applaud Merkel's leadership during the pandemic. Arguably, it is harder to lift the lockdown than to introduce it in the first place. Merkel has been clearly in charge of the government response from day one and, in my opinion, has handled the situation better than any other world leader. People tend to praise NZ but they forget that NZ had the advantage of time (e.g. Jacinda Arden only closed borders on March 19, i.e. later than most of the EU countries, and introduced the lockdown on March 25, i.e. later than the UK). Merkel did not have this luxury and was still able to respond timely and very effectively.

Interesting. From PMQs Jeremy Hunt said 20% of the people with the coronavirus are estimated to have caught the virus while in hospital. Suggesting that in the UK it has been a nosocomial/ care setting infection in a large part.

Hunt asked when the government plan to introduce weekly testing for all front line staff in hospitals and care homes. Anecdotally, a number of medical friends are having weekly tests, but it doesn't appear to be nationwide.

Not PMQs, they haven't started but in the HOC

Should we be concerned with the latest new outbreak in Beijing?

Obviously I'm concerned for them, but I mean in terms of a possible trend for us.

"nosocomial/ care setting"

With all epidemics, this usually plays some part, until there are strict hygeine measures and infection control

However, with COVID people being infectious for days before symptoms,
or even without noticeable symptoms,

then however good the system,
there will inevitably be cases passed on in hospitals & care homes,
where patients & residents likely have a lower than average immune system anyway

The UK made some glaring early mistakes,
such as hospitals discharging large numbers of infected patients into care homes
but even getting it mostly right would only have saved some deaths

In Germany, infected patients were put into hotels with staff in PPE who worked there only, all paid by govt.
BUT still had deaths there and in care homes, but "only" 3,000 out of a toal 9,000 deaths,
despite pretty good control measures

With staff not knowing they are infected, reducing care home infections requires getting the rate of community infection v low
(which it seems to be now in the UK)

My concern re schools returning in September is that unless leaders formulate a plan now they will run out of time to do so. They break up pretty soon and nothing will be discussed, decided or implemented over the holidays at all. So unless a clear strategy is decided soon, changes are made, teachers trained etc etc then they will not be ready to hit the ground running.

I foresee many schools needing 3 weeks at the start of next term to decide how to tackle schooling, sort timetables, train teachers etc.

By the time this dawns on people the teachers will have begun their summer break and it will be too late.

This will be especially pertinent to secondary schools as in most cases primaries are already further along the planning process.

Re schools, I think you are doing Boris Johnson a kindness there OP. A senior Try MP was quoted last week as saying 'Boris doesn't care about education or schools. He never has. It is never on the agenda at cabinet meetings'. I genuinely think he just does not have any interest. Spent a lot of PMQ today deflecting blame.

@BigChocFrenzy

This is probably a silly question but are the figures for hospital admissions, “numbers admitted into hospital on that day” or “numbers in hospital on that day“.

@Derbygerbil

The attempt is to capture new cases of COVID admitted or identified in hospitals but everyone does it slightly differently.

England data captures people admitted to hospital who already had a confirmed COVID-19 status at point of admission, and adds those who tested positive in the previous 24 hours whilst in hospital. Inpatients diagnosed with COVID-19 after admission are assumed to have been admitted on the day prior to their diagnosis.

Wales data includes confirmed and suspected cases, and is the number of admissions to the hospital in the previous 24 hour period up to 9am. The status of COVID/non-COVID is as at the time of reporting not at time of admission.

Northern Ireland data includes suspected and confirmed COVID-19 admissions by admission date.

There are stats on numbers still in hospital as well, which have also been steadily falling.

Thanks @wintertravel

184 deaths and 115,000 cases for today, so steady, slow decline trend continues.

An interesting comment in the Lancet ‘about rethinking risk’.

Apparently a third of deaths in USA are over 85’s so suggests (I think) that age related risk can be broken down further into related risks.
www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30276-X/fulltext

I foresee many schools needing 3 weeks at the start of next term to decide how to tackle schooling, sort timetables, train teachers etc.

Yes, we've foreseen a few things in primary which mean that we delay certain things in order to spend more time settling etc.

However, we simply can't plan till we know what the SD guidance is and also guidance around vulnerable staff.

I've just mused about the possibility of the guidance for CEV changing at the end of June having a knock on effect to CV too; I'd personally then need key worker places in school for the last two weeks as I'm sure many CV staff would as well as possibly CEV if they went that far. Schools need to plan around what they've got now as well as what the guidance might be then.

I do think we needed to try to get more kids in in order to begin to problem solve and feed back what does and doesn't work. At the same time we can only plan within current guidance.

But we don't even know what's happening in the summer yet either, if anything.

184 deaths and 115,000 cases for today, so steady, slow decline trend continues.

1,115 I believe... Either that or it’s more of a second tsunami (of 2004 Indian Ocean proportions!) rather than a second wave!

How does 184 compare with last Wed, seems quite high?

[quote whatsnext2]An interesting comment in the Lancet ‘about rethinking risk’.

Apparently a third of deaths in USA are over 85’s so suggests (I think) that age related risk can be broken down further into related risks.
www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30276-X/fulltext[/quote]
Not a surprise really - just over 20% of Covid deaths in the UK are people aged 90+ (who make up 1% of the U.K. population)

@StrawberryJam200

How does 184 compare with last Wed, seems quite high?

245 last wed