Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 14

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 14 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Uk dashboard deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - 4 nations, LAs, English regions
Slides & data UK govt pressers
[[https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavi
rus-covid-19-information-for-the-public UK stats]] list of reports added daily by PHE & DHSC
PHE Surveillance report infections & deaths released every Thursday with sep. infographic
ONS England infection surveillance report ONS UK statistics for CV related deaths, released weekly each Tuesday
Daily ECDC report UK & EEA
Worldometer UK page
Plot FT graphs compare countries deaths, cases, raw / million pop
Covidly.com world summary & graphs
Plot COVID Graphs Our World in Data additional data

We welcome factual, data driven, and civil discussions from all contributors 📈 📉 📊 👍

But bigchoc, the data for schools is like a jigsaw with a number of missing pieces.

Also, with the jigsaw analogy, each country is a separate jigsaw and really does have to do their own analysis for a wide range of reasons from class sizes to time spent outdoors, weather, population density, mask measures used.

Yes numbers of deaths among children are thankfully low and generally lower symptoms or asymptomatic (an issue in itself; can they still spread it?)

Primary and secondary settings are very different however. This is more about what is the tipping point in terms of factors external to the school (measures, cases, even weather and pollution) and factors within the school (class sizes, movement, weather affecting how much time is spent outside.)

Schools must go back and remain open as long as possible; we as teachers need to have faith our concerns are being heard regarding the guidance in some places.

Anecdotally Bil was describing how in his Leeds school they were sent a fraction of the ppe they were both promised and needed for suspected cases, and other events such as a child with diarrhea or being sick (which he had to use it for; no one could go near the poor kid till full ppe was donned.) He's not on mn but says similar things to what many are saying. (Their particular issue is that the classrooms were build for 20 is it is.)

My own setting seems very well run and I do actually now have faith that it's relatively secure; I am not reading of the same things happening in other places.

We talk a lot on here about comparing apples with apples. I agree that's important.

I don't think there's any conclusive studies re schools where the actual environment will be the same as it is in September?
So we can use previous studies and say "in x conditions the outcome was Y so we predict ....."

Im currently watching Germany and Scotland and watching the fab data bods on this thread to see the new data in the new environment. Then we can compare using those variables as bases of analysis.

March in the UK is a fairly decent comparison, has any report actually analysed expected transmission from March?

the best study is possibly the Korean one

Although the study is a bit flaky (in my opinion) on how the index children picked up the virus in the first place;

"Despite closure of their schools, these children might have interacted with each other, although we do not have data to support that hypothesis."

As schools in the UK closed to most students near the end of March when there was no testing available it will be interesting in the Autumn Term when testing is now an option and hopefully available.

If I am right in medical settings antibody tests have been used, which I would like to see for all teachers.

If we are to make the right decisions about schools having antibody tests would be useful - and if they are not, why are hospital staff having them? I know we don’t know how long any potential immunity lasts or if you can catch it twice but as teachers will have close contact in poorly ventilated settings, indoors and with no PPE, it would be useful data to have.

I think.that us the French study that Neil Ferguson challenged. He said an assumption was made that adults were the index cases. That aside - and I am sure this is just the reporting - I don't understand why that French study shows what they say it does , if anyone is able to explain why!

@MRex

March in the UK is a fairly decent comparison, has any report actually analysed expected transmission from March?

Don't think so.

But we do know that there were high levels of absence in schools from beginning of March.
Staff and students reporting symptoms of Covid.

We had cases with students in our local schools (confirmed as just before they stopped community testing). Also teachers in same school testing positive.

What we don't have and didn't have is effective test and trace to determine the source and point of transmission.

That's why I'm wary of believing that no child has ever passed it to a teacher and vice versa.
I'd be less skeptics list we also studies that also showed not once ever - anywhere - did a child pass it to a family member within a household etc. I may have missed it but I'm not sure if any reports categorically stating this?

Having just read the full French study, I think is what it is saying -

• they did retrospective blood tests across children and parents at 6 schools at the end of April to test for Covid, so what they would have been picking up was evidence of past infection
• this showed that 8.8% of children had had the infection (45/510), 7.1% of teachers, 3.6% of non-teaching staff, 11.9% of parents and 11.8% of relatives
• Previously, in Feb, there were 3 cases in primary school children getting covid in 3 of the schools, but at the time there were no reports of secondary infection in the school in terms of other pupils or teachers getting it
• the serology suggested that 61% of the parents of infected children had had CV.

I think what they are suggesting is that if the children were infectious, then there would have been more infection reported in the schools during the next fortnight; instead, clusters seem to have been very family-based, suggesting that transmission was parent-child; if it were child first, and they were effective spreaders, more people at school would have had it.

• also, the 8.8% of children having it suggests there were children with undiagnosed CV in schools, but it doesn't seem to have spread unduly within the school environment

I think.

I think it's a leap, tbh, to conclude anything from such small numbers.

They refer to another study done in the same area in high schools which came to the opposite conclusion - I am trying to find it...

My social worker friend was given an antibody test before she went back to house visits.

Thanks patricia. I think what you are saying makes sense!

Right, I've found the high school study - again a retrospective, based on blood tests, and of course a self-selecting sample - Most pupils involved here (85%) were aged 15-17 - but -

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.18.20071134v1.full.pdf

The IAR was higher in the high school group (38.3% 43.4%, and 59.3% for pupils, teachers, and school staff, respectively) than in parents and siblings (11.4% and 10.2%, respectively)

Which suggests here that there was interpupil transmission.

Thanks Patricia.

But we do know that there were high levels of absence in schools from beginning of March.
Staff and students reporting symptoms of Covid

Are there any numbers on this?

I know at the end of week before lockdown many students stayed home under guise of symptoms. In our schools in any case, and on here.

@MRex

March in the UK is a fairly decent comparison, has any report actually analysed expected transmission from March?

By mid-March, no one was being tested for Covid in the UK unless they were hospitalised so it is impossible to have any definite data about transmission in schools or anywhere else unless you are looking at serious illness/deaths. I think around 80 schools staff have died of Covid in the UK and most will have caught it in the peak transmission period. If is most likely that at lease some of them caught it in schools but no data on this.

We won't know what those absences were for due to lack of testing unfortunately.

Horse door bolted. Boris cock up.

I think were seeing a complete misuse of stats re schools. Using data from when there were 6 in a class, distnacing in place etc.

816 new cases today compared to 938 last Monday. Better than yesterday!!

816 case today, 153k P1 and P2 tests.

Takes 7 day average for cases down slightly (as last Monday was 938) and pops 7 day positivity rate down a little too.

I'll take that....

Healthcare data not updated since 7th though; hopefully tomorrow.

Deaths have been taken off main page it seems, but are still there (headline needs updating, data table shows 21, but hospital deaths announced today were 6).

7 day rolling average cases down from yesterday - which was unusually high - but up a fair bit from last Monday.

@HoldingTight

7 day rolling average cases down from yesterday - which was unusually high - but up a fair bit from last Monday.

Indeed - some 9% up - but rolling average of tests is up 13.5% over the same period.

test are always lower on Monday, although it is down on last week. At the moment I'd rather see high levels of positives because it might mean they were getting to grip with high incidence areas. Could be the first sign that they are but last week's figures showed Leicester finally going down but not everywhere.

The secondary level pupils probably picked up the virus in schools but with a high incidence in teachers and school staff probably from them. I'd suspect transmission between staff and then to pupils.

As for the high levels in March - staff just as likely to have picked it up from ski trips, the supermarket or the pub. Keep out of the staff room.

interesting re-tweet from Andy Burnham suggests NHS Test and Trace are sacking off 6,000 contact tracers and the rest are going to be divvied up between the local authorities and work directly with them.
Apart from jobs lost (though it is well documented how little some of them had to do) this sounds like a welcome development "in acknowledgement that a centralised call handling system isn't the best way to fight local outbreaks".
Totally correct, I suspect the government will spin it slightly differently.

Meanwhile am watching like a hawk the cases in the lockdown zone in the north and it doesn't seem to show much evidence of being flattened. Blackburn and Bradford have been struggling with high numbers for weeks. Oldham and Rochdale possibly heading in the right direction though.

@MarshaBradyo

But we do know that there were high levels of absence in schools from beginning of March. Staff and students reporting symptoms of Covid

Are there any numbers on this?

I know at the end of week before lockdown many students stayed home under guise of symptoms. In our schools in any case, and on here.

I don't know any exact figures.

They don't publish attendance of students and teachers anywhere.

sorry I'm making it up re oldham. Their numbers are heading worryingly upwards.

Nothing useful to say but marking my place as it disappeared from my threads!