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 💐

This study is really interesting
www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30287-X/fulltext

It identifies that some younger covid patients experienced altered mental states including dementia like behaviour, catatonia and psychosis. This is really interesting to me because I had "possible covid" mid March and one of the outstanding features was sudden onset feeling of severe anxiety, jitteriness and fast heartbeat. I thought I was just suddenly very anxious until the feeling just as suddenly lifted about 4 days later and I am convinced it was "pseudo" anxiety and part of the disease process of whatever illness I had, possibly covid. The rest of the illness was in procession, severe diarrhea, dizziness, sore throat, sore back, and feeling like I'd inhaled chilli powder, then weeks of indigestion.

ONS estimates are based on the numbers in the Shoots post. A shift from 11/22523 to 14/24256 doesn't say much. The numbers are simply very tiny.

If I am reading the government dashboard correctly, it looks like the Pillar 4 (surveillance) testing is being significantly expanded. It might represent ongoing testing of care home staff or it may mean the ONS testing sample (which is currently 22,000-24,000 people) may be increased to over 100,000+.

coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/testing

I think Zoe Covid numbers are still useful as one of many data points but I am amazed how they explained their change of approach. Instead of using plain English and saying "we made a mistake and we are now fixing it" they chose to give the following explanation:

Results from these antibody tests provide information about past infections, so removing reported antibody tests from the analysis gives a more accurate reflection of the number of new cases in the population.

Removing antibody tests does not give a more accurate reflection of the number of new cases - it corrects an obvious error!

1006 new infections today. I'm feeling better now it's down from yesterday but it would be very nice to see that number get below 1000 again.

261 new infections in England and substantially less in each other part of the UK. Where does the 1006 come from, does anyone know? I must be missing something obvious.

That's weird Doorine it's quite a difference between the two values isn't it.

@doorine that will i expect be the difference between pillar one (healthcare) and pillar 2 (community) testing. Most tests and positives come from pillar 2, but location of those is not released daily. Which is not helpful in terms of local infection tracking as it means any local numbers are probably at least 60% too low.

That would explain it!
Are pillar 2 tests released by country weekly do you know?

@Valambtine
I had covid symptoms in april - horrendous palpitations and chest pain but I also had intense anxiety that I have never felt before.
It can be a result of a very high temp. I was hospitalised with flu when i was 26 because of an uncontrollable temperature and I lost the plot. I felt freezing cold and was convinced the nurses were torturing me by taking away my blankets and putting a fan on me. Not my finest hour!

Ah, the pillar 1/2 thing makes sense!

@Doordine

The data only shows Pillar 1 tests (where a clinical need or a member of NHS staff I believe), not Pillar 2 (everything else)... typically Pillar 1 accounts for 25-30% of tests. So it’s misleading when people refer to that and say “only X cases in my area of today!” as it’s accounting for only 1/4-1/3 or total figures.

So, overall 1006 cases today compared to 1346 last Friday. So, it seems that this week, we have a definite downward trend in cases.

Slightly more deaths today (186)than Fri last week (173) but it's tricky with the death figures because of reporting delays. Overall this week, the trend is still downwards.

Desperately trying to keep positive!

Tricky to get a real feel for what's happening with case numbers apart from admissions!

Hospital admissions can be a reasonable proxy for case numbers, but it can be misleading. For instance, if numbers explode in younger age groups, only very few will need hospitalising.... which might not seem like too much of an issue on face value, but different demographics don’t live in hermetically sealed bubbles, and there will be spread.

A certain level of hospitalisations caused by older people being infected from cases spilling over from a rampant epidemic in the younger generation would be far more concerning than if a similar level of hosptialisations were caused by a more even spread of cases across age demographics.

Deaths do seem to remain stubbornly high given the number of cases and the stage we’re at.... I appreciate there is a lag between cases and deaths, but even so..... I wonder why?

It would be interesting to know when those dying became infected, and what proportion of the deaths are those that had been ill for many weeks.

Val I had those symptoms. Especially the palpitations for a few weeks before I lost sense of smell and then had temp. I explained that chilli powder feeling like a lump of glass studded concrete in my upper chest. I've had indigestion ever since but it's becoming better everyday.

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

I am very confused about the stats at the moment.

Zoe estimates that we have 127,000 active cases at the moment and 2,300 new cases. That would be an r number of .02 (approximately). But, we are apparently running at an r close to 1.

In addition, there are circa 150 deaths a day, which makes no sense as a proportion of new cases.

Either the r number is wrong and it is much lower or the ifr is much higher, or there are a number of very old cases, now isolated and still active. But...we appear to be close to a steady state and that is inconsistent with old cases.

Something is wrong.

I appreciate that the data by council area only includes pillar 1 tests, but my county (Suffolk) has recorded no (pillar 1) cases over the past week, down from 30-40 per day at the peak in mid-April.
This is great news....

However, with c.1,000 or so infections each day, if cases were spread evenly we’d have expected c.30 cases (assuming Pillar 1 accounts for 25-30%) to have been reported in the data over the past week rather than zero! This has to be statistically significant..... Assuming Suffolk isn’t a special case, this implies that Covid is becoming increasingly concentrated in particular areas.

If I had time I’d analyse the data to find out where...

Zoe estimates that we have 127,000 active cases at the moment and 2,300 new cases. That would be an r number of .02 (approximately). But, we are apparently running at an r close to 1.

I’m thinking that many, probably most, active cases have been infected for a week or more and have yet to recover. They may well have infected others a while ago.

Derby,

But that would imply that the number of cases are rapidly decreasing, or that some active cases are dragging on for many weeks. A week or more would not really change the r rate from 0.02 to 0.9 (around), a factor of 45. It would imply that, for most of the 127,000, it has been many many weeks since they had a chance to infect someone.

@larrygrylls

It depends how they measure active cases... I imagine many of those are weeks old. Either they are still ill - quite possible -of their status hasn’t been updated.

@Jrobhatch29
@itsgettingweird

Interesting to compare. I forgot to add the cough which developed late on, it was dry but was never horrendous or continuous. I never had a fever though jrob.

@Derby My friend who's a nurse tells me that some people are spending many weeks in hospital before either getting better or dying. So there's quite a lag on deaths, and some of the deaths we see currently are the tail end of those who caught it during the peak. They also include people dying in care homes, who are not included in the estimates of community infection rates. It looks as if they are still not on top of the outbreak in care homes as there are still a lot of deaths in them.

Thanks Derbies and Fireflies,

Hopefully we will see deaths down to 30 or less over next month or so, based on that.

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?