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 📈 📉 📊 👍

I'm guessing the idea is to try and get as many people as possible who have it (and people they've been in contact with) into isolation. The other alternative is a return to much tighter local lockdown I guess. (Which I suspect is where we may well end up - a pandemic is lots of localised epidemics really.)

I’m really sorry if I’ve missed it but I’ve been looking to see if there is a review on how the PHE are collating their data?

The NHS is currently having all sorts of restrictions imposed on it by the government - like masks worn all day even if you are not seeing patients. Some staff even get told of for removing them to have a drink - in this weather. So the NHS is less productive. It also prioritises the life threatening so if you are not you have to wait. If you object to that complain to your MP, the ones with the power to bring change or pay for private care, that is now restarting.

Although those ith a political agenda claim the NHS stopped all other work that is easily disproved using published statistics. It continued to do emergencies and maternity services even at the peak of the pandemic in the worst affected areas.

There is an interesting thread on twitter, Steve Conway I think, about how the death rate in ICU improved very rapidly during the pandemic. The NHS is starved of resources and still managed to rejig capacity in days to cope with an emergency, then rapidly developed improvements in treatment. It also found the steroid that is making a massive difference to treatment. Everyone likes to complain about the NHS but you get far more than you pay for. If you want better lobby your MPs for german level of resources.

In Florida young people are dying of coronavirus, often picked up at work. www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/us/virus-young-deaths.html?referringSource=articleShare A school in North Georgia quaranteed vast numbers of pupils 6 days after opening www.newsweek.com/georgia-school-district-quarantines-over-850-students-teachers-after-reopening-six-days-1524339

Sadly we are not New Zealand, who have handled this very well. They will track and trace now and a few days of restriction is nothing.

In other news it is worth watching Southampton, where they are trialling saliva tests. Rather difficult to work out what impact it is having but their infection rate is certainly non zero still. coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases?areaType=ltla&areaName=Southampton

@MRex
In Oadby & Wigston before we were 'released' about 10 days ago from lockdown everyone was encouraged to have a test symptoms or not. I believe that's still the case for our Leicester City neighbour as well

That suggests nobody died from lack of treatment for other things during lockdown

No remember lockdown is expected to reduce deaths in the short term (fewer car/work accidents, fewer deaths during risky but elective surgery etc. and even apparently premature births) so you would also have to account for the expected reduced death from lockdown.

Most of the hypothesised damage of lockdown to health is longer term - lack of exercise/add weight metabolic disorders and dementia, we won't have seen them yet, and then of course recession related, but that was happening irrespective of lockdown.

@Frazzled2207 @MRex
Sorry - that last message was for Frazzled

Here is some more information on New Zealand - and with colleagues of one person already showing symptoms I think New Zealanders will go on supporting a sensible leader. www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/auckland-family-tested-positive-covid-19-have-connections-across-city?auto=6180248444001

@Frazzled2207

not sure where else this is happening but on the twitter feed of Blackburn with Darwen council:

We are now encouraging everyone in the borough to get tested for coronavirus, you don’t need to have symptoms.

This happened and still is in Luton. But they went further and anyone with an LU postcode can get a test regardless of symptoms or not which is a MUCH wider area than the v localised problem street and even Luton Council area

@sirfredfredgeorge - ONS report includes those reductions, and the long-term health declines including recession, but they also had a large number of missed heaet attacks / strokes etc that failed to present at hospital. It was posted a little way back in the thread, I can search for it tomorrow if needed.

www.standard.co.uk/news/health/three-separate-coronavirus-daily-death-tolls-a4522296.html

The Times reported that ministers are pushing for a reporting method that would only include deaths recorded 28 days after a positive test — lowering the current figure by about 10 per cent.

However, Government statisticians are thought to favour a third option, known as “60 days plus”,
which uses a two-month cut-off but allows for additions for those who died later after a positive test.

< the latter would cover recent cases such as the consultant clapped out of ICU after >60 days,
but who sadly died of a heart attack a couple of days later - obviously a COVID death >

Interesting if above is correct - that recent daily deaths figures would only be reduced by 10% with full 28-day cutoff

I think they are referring to the 10% of the cumulative number , i.e. the the cumulative toll of deaths with a positive test (which is currently 46,000) might go down to 42,000. This might bring consistency with COVID death reporting in some other countries (who also only report cases confirmed by a positive test) but will widen the gap with the ONS number (COVID on death certificates).

This is an interesting site. Apologies if you've all known about it, used it and referenced it repeatedly www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-2019-ncov-eueea

Do they mean lowering the overall figure by 10% rather than the daily figure? I seen a similar figure to PatriciaHolm for the discrepancy between the ons vs PHE -about 40 per day.

for last week that is

@Frazzled2207

not sure where else this is happening but on the twitter feed of Blackburn with Darwen council:

We are now encouraging everyone in the borough to get tested for coronavirus, you don’t need to have symptoms.

Based on the last 2 weekly PHE surveillance reports which provide a table showing individuals tested per 100,000 per day B&D averaged 343.4 per 100,000 and then decreased ??? to 249.1per 100,000 in the wk 32 report with tests covering the period 24-30 July.

Given B&D has a population of just shy of 150,000 this equates to just over 6,200 individuals tested or 4.1% of the population.

Luton has been mentioned - again based on the two weekly reports testing rates were 116.7 and then really ramped up to 496.7; giving a combined 9148 people or 4.3% of the Luton LA area population of c.213,000

Bradford - individuals testing rates 116.3 and 124 (so only about 25% higher than the all England rate); equating to just over 9,000 individuals or 1.7% of the LA population,

Oldham rates 130 and 168; meaning just under 5,000 people or 2.1% of the population.

Oadby & Wigston looks to have the highest proportion of its (much smaller) population tested over the last two weeks covered by the data published - at 7%.

Presumably testing will be really ramped up further.

Given the PHE Lower Super Output Area maps also published last week seemed to indicate that a relatively small number of LSOAs in watched areas account for a significant proportion of their cases; intense targeted testing for such LSOAs could achieve a high population coverage. A typical LSOA averages 1500 residents.

@cantkeepawayforever

102 new deaths isn't good, either.

Death figures confuse me.

They are constantly way above the number of people on ventilators and almost as high as admissions.

I wonder how many are historic deaths?

@itsgettingweird
Hospital deaths are very low- currently single figures per day.
Total deaths includes care homes etc which is unreliable because it includes everyone that has EVER tested positive so for example they could have tested positive in march/april and died of other causes more recently. So not reliable at all.

@boys
Golly those testing rates are low aren’t they. But a bit out of date, certainly across GM there has been quite a lot of increased testing recently.

Those figures look a bit low given the increases? Also, 4% per day would be everyone over a 25 day period. They went into lockdown on 31st July, so it should be at 44% of the population by now. (Apart from people getting tested more frequently due to working in care homes etc, but that can match off against the figures actually being a bit higher).

@MRex

Those figures look a bit low given the increases? Also, 4% per day would be everyone over a 25 day period. They went into lockdown on 31st July, so it should be at 44% of the population by now. (Apart from people getting tested more frequently due to working in care homes etc, but that can match off against the figures actually being a bit higher).

sorry I should have been clearer.

The overall numbers I showed in the post above reflect, based on the two PHE reports, the total for the 14 day period

So taking Blackburn

• 6200 individuals over 14 days, or 442 people on average per day.

• 6200 equates to a rate of 2% per week, so essentially at that rate a full year would be required to test the entire population.

Just checking in on the thread. I can only bear/have the time for in-depth reading on Covid data approx once per week and then there are about 800 messages to absorb and it takes ages! I only look at this thread and avoid all the other Covid speculation on MN.

@cantkeepawayforever

I think the question is whether it is higher in the areas of concern, where there is a surge in testing, or whether it is a more general 'rising wave' across wide areas of the country.

I would be less worried about the former than the latter.

I think we can probably assume it is the former.

Taking the daily figures based on specimen date for each day from 24th July to 6th August (that being the last day with nearish to complete case numbers).

Sorted high to low each day by confirmed cases the first 25 LAs - 8% of the English total - account on average for 53% of each day's cases, with a range between 49.7% and 59.4% of cases.

7 LAs appeared in the top 25 on all 14 days Bradford, Leicester, Manchester, Birmingham, Oldham, Blackburn with Darwen, Kirklees. These 7 , 2% of the total number of LAs, accounted for 25% of cases.

2 LAs , Swindon and Rochdale, appeared on 13/14 days , and 5 LAs, Leeds; Calderdale; Northampton; Salford and Sandwell on 12/14 days. These 7 accounted for a further 13% of cases.

So far then 14 LAs accounting for 38% of cases.

Trafford appeared 11 / 14 days, and 6 on 10/14 days Sheffield, Stockport, Bolton, Liverpool, Wakefield, Coventry. These 7 take us to 21 LAs that account for 46% of cases.

Thereafter 19 LAs appear between 2 and 9 times, and 21 LAs feature just once (almost exclusively at the lower end). This next group of 40 LAs take us to 67% of total cases.

Leaving the final 1/3 of cases spread over 254 or 80% of LAs

Whilst we are looking at a bigger than desired number of reported cases today, these will mainly be in England and will be spread over a number of days in terms of specimen date. It would not surprise me when the detail is available tomorrow if anywhere between 8% and 10% of the cases in England will be shown to have a specimen date more than seven days old.

1,148 confirmed cases reported, which is the highest number since 21 June

• but there were far fewer tests in June, so we should look at the % positive tests now and then

The cases trend looks v gradually upwards since early July - when many measures were relaxed

• so we need to see if the % positive changes and also if the upward trend levels off again

PHE have this vertical line showing the cutoff date after which "data may change"

@boys3 - ah, got it, then yes that's low!