Currently 0.61% of tests are positive. That’s a tiny %
Read the article
According to the article linked, tests in the area are coming back about 3% positive, though, rather than 1% as elsewhere. Surely if more tests are being done but the problem is not getting worse, that percentage should have gone down, not up?...
No. If you do 100 tests and 1% comes back positive you have 1 case.
If you have 100 tests and 3% comes back positive you have 3 cases.
If you then increase testing and are still getting a percentage of 3% positive its worrying.
You would expect that more testing would reduce the percentage of positive tests because your track and trace was successfully identifying more of the right people to test who werent being tested previously.
As the number of positive tests go up, if your number of tests is increasing by roughly the same proportion but you are still getting a 3% positive rate that suggests you are seeing expedential growth.
One of the particular problem of the virus being spread initially amongst under 25s is we know that they are much more likely to be asymptomatic than older age groups. You perhaps also have the additional factor that Trafford having higher rates of affluence and general underlying health, whilst coronavirus doesn't pose as much of a threat to the local population as they are less likely to have serious outcomes, its a breeding ground for the virus because it can spread undetected for longer, meaning that it becomes more widespread.
We know that it was the wealthier middle class travelling which seeded covid-19 in the uk. Its only when it got into older populations that we started to detect it and it started to cause wider problems. We could be seeing a repeat of that to some degree.
So this is why they will be particularly concerned about Trafford.