Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 11

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 11 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Slides & data UK govt pressers
NHS England stats including breakdown by Hospital Trust
ONS UK statistics for CV related deaths outside hospitals, released weekly each Tuesday
Financial Times Daily updates and graphs
HSJ Coronavirus updates
Worldometer UK page
Covidly.com to filter graphs using selected data filters ONS statistics for CV related deaths outside hospitals, released weekly each Tuesday
Plot COVID Graphs Our World in Data

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

Oops sorry @Firefliess have just seen your post.

I have read about a private initiative of medics that wants to retest the meat processing workers claiming that the tests taken resulted in lots of false postives because of other corona virae (pl.?) usually about in those places, that is - the test not being specific enough.

Is there a scientific basis for this idea?
Who would finance the study? (meat plant owners?)

I've no idea why this job ad appeared on my Google home page, but thought it might amuse people here.
jobs.lever.co/joinzoe/60072865-90cc-45b8-bf0a-0d736a614f8f
Zoe app appear to be looking for a new head. Reckon they sacked the old one over their inability to distinguish antibody tests from infection ones?!

Is it that Zoe doesn't cover care- home and infections caught in hospital which may be driving the R up?

@Firefliess

Lol - I would not be surprised if you are actually right!

@Prokupatuscrakedatus do you have any link describing this?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8463213/Britain-announces-70-Covid-19-deaths-preliminary-toll.html?ito=social-facebook

This is an interesting read with lots of informative stats.

Val I had a cough for a few weeks. Nothing major and nothing I didn't put down to usual hayfever cough or post viral cough (see below) during that time.
Same with being a bit breathless - especially climbing stairs for a few weeks too. Something felt odd but it didn't match to covid as described and I hadn't been in contact with anyone who'd been to Wuhan which is what we were told.
Tracing back it's very possible the extreme cold (very bad sinuses, temp, sore throat with what looked like baby milk spots on it and wouldn't be soothed with anything for 2 days) could have been - perhaps- the infection. That was beginning of Feb. It's only knew hearing stories and reading the "my kings are burning" and seeing stories of repeated illness getting worse each time with respiratory symptoms does it seem possible that it was covid.
Most interesting is that I didn't pass it around the entire school. Although my class staff and kids all had some kind of cold and cough (but nothing serious) over that 6 weeks.

I should add the loss of smell, taste and temp with extreme breathlessness, low sats and repeated palpitations started 20th March!

@SummerBreeze23

I must admit I am finding it very disheartening that the death figures are not reducing more quickly.

Just came on to ask about this, in fact the death figures have been higher than the same day the previous week several times recently. Not rising as a 7 day average but certainly reaching a plateau. That seems odd given the cases are falling and hospitals are less overwhelmed. Can anybody shed any light?

Only for 3 days, and only by a little - 7, 12 and 13. By contrast, this Tuesday's number was 65 down on last week, and Wednesday's 30.

The data is very very lumpy; 22% of the England hospital deaths announced today, for example, occurred over a week ago.

Looking at actual day of death shows a better, more realistic, downwards trend.

Hospital admissions and ventilator beds in use are on a steady downwards 7 day rolling average trend down as well, which suggests deaths will continue to do so as well.

@ShootsFruitAndLeaves

Regrettably not, I was told that is was mentioned on twitter. I do not have social media and none of my family have twitter - so I asked here. I felt sure sb on here would know. (Oh, and it would be in German.)

Reading it does seem likely it causes anxiety. My dc2 (4) also was spitting her water bottle in the house and put our internal door handle in her mouth.

But tbh getting any cough or temp at the moment is going to be anxiety inducing. Even if it's just a worry of getting a test.
Getting ill when
it was just a leave you to it
You cant see a gp
You cant go to hospital
They were waiting for people's lips to go blue
You couldnt get tested
And people were on hold to 111 for hours
The messaging you are better off at home

Is imo likely to leave a ptsd.

Now you would still have a worry for a few days and whether you can get a test etc.

I think nhs actual figures for deaths were diwn to about 50.

keep the strange thing was, I was not anxious that it was covid. Mine started March 14 at which point it was fever and dry continuous cough, neither of which I had. I thought I had a noro thing at first - loss of appetite and diarrhea were first symptoms. By the time I got the chili powder feeling and started to wonder if it was covid, the anxiety sensation has disappeared as fast as it came. Weirdest illness I ever had for sure.

Thanks @PatriciaHolm that makes sense

Yep val same here. It was a weird illness and I certainly knew something was up. But not Covid! Even when I lost sense of smell and then taste it wasn't even mentioned as a symptom!

I think I knew I had Covid the past 2 days of actually being ill with Covid. Not the weeks previously I'd been going downhill!

I was knackered for 3 weeks after this too though.

PTSD is actually a good point. I'm very much a "I'm alive so I'm ok" illness type person. But this has really had an effect on me and I can't get my head around the feeling I had. It was after I recovered I realised the feat the breathlessness gave me.

Prokup I haven't read anything about querying test positives at the meat plants
However, I cba with any social media but MN (old fogey alert)

Blood tests can distinguish COVID from other Coronaviruses, but these tests would be swab tests

• I don't know if swab tests can 100% distinguish between different Voronaviruses, or if could be a significant cause of false positives.

==> Anyone know about swab test specificity ?

https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/369/bmj.m1808.full.pdf

Laboratory tests are characterized by their ability to detect a positive case (sensitivity) and their ability to determine a negative case (specificity).

So a sensitive test is less likely to provide a false-negative result and a specific test is less likely to provide a false-positive result.

Hello. Can anyone give me a link to the breakdown of COVID deaths per underlying condition eg that shows clearly on a graph which underlying conditions have the highest death statistics.

Genuine reason for asking. I know I've seen it here - I lurk and find this thread very interesting- but can't find it right now.

Thanks in advance x

BigChoc
I thought as much and I don't do SM either - I was told at work and couldn't find a source I'd be prepared to look at.

I haven't visited this thread for a while but came on for reassurance this evening.
I work for a West Midlands NHS trust and both yesterday and today we have seen quite a spike in 'suspected covid'
I'm hoping it is just coincidence with hayfever being so relentless at the moment.
I purposely stayed away from this thread at the beginning while I was working through the thick of it, as it was adding to my anxieties.
However tonight it has soothed my worries

I was comparing the worldometers to the Government’s published figures for today’s cases.... one stated 1,380, and the other 1,006. The reason was given in a footnote.

“Due to historical revisions the cumulative total for lab-confirmed UK cases is 374 higher than that obtained by adding today's daily figure to yesterday’s total.”

Does anyone know how these 374 are any different to other 1,006 tests and why they wouldn’t be included along with the daily figures? A cynic would say it’s to artificially suppress the published figures, but I’m quite not that cynical... I’m guessing simply it’s a reconciliation of figures that flagged up a discrepancy?

I’ve been looking further at the distribution of positive cases having analysed the data from the government coronavirus data site.

Where my county of Suffolk has only had 3 cases (I appreciate they’re only pillar 1) in the past fortnight, Bedfordshire (comprising 3 unitary councils and a similar population to Suffolk) has had over 160 cases over the same period.

That’s a huge difference and nothing like the relatively even spread we saw earlier in the pandemic‘s progress.

I think this is positive (though perhaps not if you’re living in Bedfordshire!) as it means health bodies are able to focus efforts in hotspots rather than spread their containment efforts thinly across the country.

Bedfordshire was a bit of a hotspot a couple of weeks ago, I know people who live there. Haven't heard mention of it in recent days

Swab tests- are PCR tests and are highly specific for this particular Coronavirus. However the sensitivity is more open to interpretation. A positive test is more reliable than a negative test as ‘negative‘ might mean a signal that is just below the cut-off point for a positive result.
In general an infected person would not have been thought to shed infectious virus for more than 1-2 weeks after contracting the infection, with peak virus shedding when symptoms appear. However viral RNA can be detected in some cases many weeks after initial exposure. It has also been seen that a patient can become pcr positive again after previously testing negative and this can go on for weeks. It is simply not known whether these cases are actually producing virus- and thus are still infectious. This has consequences for ongoing care, especially in nursing homes for example.

@Derbygerbil

I was comparing the worldometers to the Government’s published figures for today’s cases.... one stated 1,380, and the other 1,006. The reason was given in a footnote.

“Due to historical revisions the cumulative total for lab-confirmed UK cases is 374 higher than that obtained by adding today's daily figure to yesterday’s total.”

Does anyone know how these 374 are any different to other 1,006 tests and why they wouldn’t be included along with the daily figures? A cynic would say it’s to artificially suppress the published figures, but I’m quite not that cynical... I’m guessing simply it’s a reconciliation of figures that flagged up a discrepancy?

Not found anything specific (trying to juggle a toddler) but in the past this has been due to a bunch of historic tests not being counted when they were initially processed and them finding this out weeks/a month down the line. So my feeling is this 374 positives are from a while back so including them in yesterdays figures would be misleading.

I wondered if it would be helpful to share the Zoe app data that they're apparently sending to the government which is for Zoe app contributors. I couldn't download the report.