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 📈 📉 📊 👍

@Firefliess

I wonder if it's just easier to identify outbreaks in churches than in gyms. People attending church tend to know one another, so it'll soon get round if someone has the virus. I don't know anyone at my gym and wouldn't know if they were ill. Plus a lot of older people go to church who are likely a) to be ill enough to notice and b) not to have had a lot of other contact, so it's easy to identify that the church is where they caught it. Trains are even harder to identify outbreaks on - no means of anyone contacting so the people on a specific carriage of a specific train.

.... With our t&t system, it would be just as easy to identify every gym outbreak as church, as every gym has electronic check-in with time & date Both gym and church would have full contact details of all attendees on each date

This is precisely the kind of question the local t&t teams ask, to find a common denominator:
"which church, gym, club etc have you attended in the last few weeks" ?
and they go down the list of possible contact types.

and of course, once the answers are input into the system, the computer will find a match if it is missed by different teams asking the members

[quote QuentinWinters]@PrayingandHoping BCF is in germany and was saying corona is spreading in churches...[/quote]
....
which is why some have reverted to online
Mostly they are back in church, but with extra cleaning, masks, SD and taking names

I don't know about singing though

Merkel's party is Christian Democrat (which in Europe is moderate conservative with social conscience)
and there is a higher % of church-goers here, who pay a church tax too;
the church has more influence - and a lot more money - than you might expect.
It is a human right to practice religion, so it is protected as much as possible

I've been comparing the sharp rise in cases - not yet deaths - in Spain to the situation in the Uk and Germany

Even looking at broad trends, it's clear Spain has a particular problem with sharply rising cases that the other 2 countries don't - yet, at least

Unfortunately exponential growth does trundle along quietly for a while until it suddenly rockets, which is what seems to have happened in Spain,
but fingers crossed will be brought under control again

@BigChocFrenzy

I've been comparing the sharp rise in cases - not yet deaths - in Spain to the situation in the Uk and Germany

Even looking at broad trends, it's clear Spain has a particular problem with sharply rising cases that the other 2 countries don't - yet, at least

Unfortunately exponential growth does trundle along quietly for a while until it suddenly rockets, which is what seems to have happened in Spain,
but fingers crossed will be brought under control again

I think that Spanish chart is wrong - The NYT appears to be (understandably) using the total announced number which includes the past antigen tests (for previous infection) that Spain announce; instead of the number of actual new infections, which was for today 1,683. Spanish numbers are up, but not to the over 5k new infections a day level.

www.mscbs.gob.es/profesionales/saludPublica/ccayes/alertasActual/nCov-China/documentos/Actualizacion_179_COVID-19.pdf

I suspect that gym goers are on average younger than church goers, so probably more likely to firstly need medical care, so get tested, but also may go to more places making it harder to pinpoint where they caught it.
In our area very few churches have opened although a few are going to try in the next few weeks.

@JulyBreeze I’m glad that the local public health teams are being more confident and vocal. I know they vary according to area, but most have built up vital relationships locally and have a good understanding.

That lower figure would be a relief, Patricia as otherwise it could only be exponential growth taking off

The ECDC has Spain at a very high 14-day incidence of 74 / 100,000 vs UK 14.1 and France 22.4
I did wonder what was being counted in the 74

Mind you, Spain isn't the highest:
Luxemburg has 194 / 100,000 - and I don't know what they are counting either

@Witchend

I suspect that gym goers are on average younger than church goers, so probably more likely to firstly need medical care, so get tested, but also may go to more places making it harder to pinpoint where they caught it. In our area very few churches have opened although a few are going to try in the next few weeks.

.... I agree younger gym goers may not have as many symptoms I'd say mean age is late 30s in all gyms I've belonged to over the last 20+ years - although I never go to the fashionable health club type that skew even younger

However, even if younger people go to many places, local t&t would still pick up a particular gym as a common factor.
It's an important aspect of what they do
The computer cross-checks every contact with all the contacts from all the other recent cases in the area the infected person has lived, worked & played

It's v difficult to say definitely where someone has caught the virus,
but all t&t need do is to find any common locations

Then if contacts are clustered around a church, restaurant or gym etc it is not necessary to prove it was the source

• if more than a couple of infected people went there, it would be closed down for deepclean and staff testing and all members who had contact would be tested etc

@BigChocFrenzy

That lower figure would be a relief, Patricia as otherwise it could only be exponential growth taking off

The ECDC has Spain at a very high 14-day incidence of 74 / 100,000 vs UK 14.1 and France 22.4
I did wonder what was being counted in the 74

Mind you, Spain isn't the highest:
Luxemburg has 194 / 100,000 - and I don't know what they are counting either

download.data.public.lu/resources/covid-19-rapports-hebdomadaires/20200806-091300/coronavirus-rapport-hebdomadaire-presse-05082020.pdf

Seems to show a last week incidence of 69.96/100k, 93 the previous week, but of course the population of Luxembourg is only 625k so that's 525 positives last week.

Interestingly, they break out positives gained from contact testing, which make up 40% of cases with a very high % rate - 47% of those tested through contact testing are positive.

On the ECDC country bit for Luxemburg, we see the cases rising sharply again in July.
Testing has risen over the last few months
The % positive graph is only to about 25 Jul, but then looked about 3%, so does look a sharp recent rise

However, probably the country is too small to worry over unless you live there !

@BigChocFrenzy

On the ECDC country bit for Luxemburg, we see the cases rising sharply again in July. Testing has risen over the last few months The % positive graph is only to about 25 Jul, but then looked about 3%, so does look a sharp recent rise

The data behind it shows a growth to 1.2% for the penultimate week on it and 0.9% for the last week - its really hard to read the actual graph. They do seem to be doing more (and more targeted) testing, which is yielding more cases.

Only half the cases from contact testing seems low, that leaves half who just caught it in the wild.

Poor Luxembourg, this virus seems very hard to control in a city when it takes hold.

Oldham is not looking great at the moment, despite the local authority being aware of the problem. They are talking of the problem lasting for weeks so clearly have no faith in their ability to stop the spread.

It looks like the growth in cases has levelled off at least in Oldham, and that's the first priority. Yes, the number of daily cases is still high, but they did manage to get it down before. Bradford is more worrying to me, in that they have consistently been at a high level for months.

Am I right to think that all of this from the Netherlands is concerning: www.rivm.nl/en/news/number-of-confirmed-covid-19-infections-almost-doubled-last-week

Cases have nearly doubled but testing is down (although possibly more focused contact testing is happening). Hospital admissions have doubled although from a very low base. 109 new clusters detected, and the source for 70% of these is not yet known.

I think it's early days, obviously, but these are all the warning signs for a potential second wave, right?

The Netherlands sent everyone back to normal quickly, although I read they strenuously observe guidance issued. They are one of the few countries that got schools fully back. They are on holiday now, though, of course but that sort of opening up could have had knock on effects?

Oldham is one of the areas on the PHE watch list, and as such we know they are doing more testing there than average (from my analysis yesterday). Looking at their 7 day average by specimen date, it's been fairly stable for a week, but the last couple of days may increased due to data lag so it's definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Bradford's 7 day average is pretty stable too and has been for a week or so, again same caveat about last couple of days data.

It would be nice to see both starting to trend down.

Piggy depends when they finished school/incubation period/how long you take to get ill enough to need hosp - a month? It doesn't look good with the way "our" arseholes politicians are saying everything will be fine and kids are not at risk etc. No shit? The kids teach themselves, huh?

In the Netherlands, it looks like about 50% of their cases are in Amsterdam or Rotterdam, which make up 10% of the population, which suggests it's "a lots of people in a city relaxing" problem - as well as, maybe, a relaxing of people's vigilance - from

www.rivm.nl/en/news/gap-between-intention-and-behaviour-in-staying-home-and-testing-for-covid-19

The Dutch policy of staying home and getting tested if you have corona-related symptoms can count on support from the majority of the over 50,000 participants in RIVM National Institute for Public Health and the Environments behavioural study. However, if people actually develop symptoms, 80% say they went outside anyway, and only 12% say they got tested. 4 out of 10 people attribute their symptoms to a health condition other than COVID-19, such as hay fever, and state this as the reason why they do not get tested

Dutch story seems to be very similar to what is happening in other countries. People get tired of the lockdown and start socialising more. From the article:

The source of most infections is still within the home; this is the case in 52.8% of all clusters. Most of the other infections are the result of contact with other family members, friends, at parties, in the workplace or other leisure activities such as cafés, restaurants or sports clubs.

There is no reference to schools.

@pussycatinboots

Piggy depends when they finished school/incubation period/how long you take to get ill enough to need hosp - a month? It doesn't look good with the way "our" arseholes politicians are saying everything will be fine and kids are not at risk etc. No shit? The kids teach themselves, huh?

Schools in NL finished between 3 and 5 weeks ago.

Overall, just 14 people under 20 have been admitted to hospital with Corona in NL, and no-one under 30 has died.

As with much other evidence, the children themselves don't seem to be at any measurable risk. The growth is coming from the 20-39 year olds mostly, in the cities, though the hospitalisations seem to be in the older 60+ groups (in a familiar pattern).

ECDC published a report on COVID transmissions at school. Their conclusions are similar to what we have heard multiple times. While there are clearly risks involved, the evidence from contact tracing in schools, and observational data from a number of EU countries suggest that re-opening schools has not been associated with significant increases in community transmission.

www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/children-and-school-settings-covid-19-transmission

I am a bit disappointed with the ECDC report, as I feel it is a bit vague. It says:
If appropriate physical distancing and hygiene measures are applied, schools are unlikely to be more effective propagating environments than other occupational or leisure settings with similar densities of people. However our main concerns are that appropriate physical distancing cannot be applied - and is not going to be applied...

It also says...
There is conflicting published evidence on the impact of school closure/re-opening on community transmission levels, although the evidence from contact tracing in schools, and observational data from a number of EU countries suggest that re-opening schools has not been associated with significant increases in community transmission. When most EU countries have not opened schools yet, many that have like Denmark have taken several physical distancing measures (much more than the UK suggests) and as it also reports, because child to child transmission seems more asymptomatic there is a lack of evidence.

I am for schools opening - but in a more controlled way, looking at ventilation in particular - and with better test and trace and lower numbers of cases. I had hoped that the ECDC would list more practical evidence based guidelines on HOW schools can open more safely. For me it is not enough to just say they probably are OK.