What coronavirus rate per 100,000 people is safe enough / manageable?

[MRex]

What rate (per 100,000 people) of new daily coronavirus cases seems to be manageable enough to keep things open while staying on top of cases? We aren't a NZ who can close our borders for long without major business impact, so elimination however desirable is a distant dream. Meanwhile people want schools open, pubs open, shops etc and the disruption of open/close is very undesirable. So what is an acceptable rate/100,000 people that the UK can cope with for now in each region? And why do you think that level is manageable? And does the level differ per region?

It might be useful then when we look at local area figures to internally say "ah, we keep on top of anything under 2/5/10/20 per 100,000, low enough risk for shielded, so that level is ok." I'd be interested in getting everyone's thoughts please. (Particularly from the data thread, but anyone.)

I’ve no idea about the U.K. but in Germany I think we have to have a local lockdown if our rate goes above 50/100000 on a 7 day average of new cases.

Here in Northants some areas are at 26 and they've just had some extra restrictions imposed.

I have

We aren't a NZ who can close our borders for long without major business impact

What? You think it's easy for them? You think there's no impact?

We could have done what they did, our Govt chose not to.

We could have acted much much much sooner - like they did.

Or harder like they did

But our Govt chose to sit back & watch Rome burn instead.

We could have done what they did, our Govt chose not to.

Of course, we could have never been New Zealand. People who praise New Zealand for "locking down early" forget that the actual level 4 lockdown was imposed on March 25th (i.e. later than in the UK).

In hindsight, our best strategy would have been to try and replicate another large European country - Germany (suppress the virus as early as possible, test and trace and control the spread). Of course, this didn't happen either but it was a very different type of mistake. Germany never aimed for virus eradication.

On the actual question - I think the German level of up to 50 cases per 100,000 population for a local level /targeted lockdown sounds like a reasonable starting point. People may be tempted to argue for lower numbers but I do not see how our economy can sustain this.

Not sure what the per 100,000 people is but the rates in the north east region, where I live, to me feel reasonable at the moment.

In my LA there's been somewhere between 0 and 12 cases each week over the last 8 weeks and very few clusters; over all though during the whole pandemic I think we've still had the highest number per 100,000 in England.

Reasonable from the POV of sevrvices continuing as they are at the moment and schools going back over the next few weeks (some don't till the 8th September.)

Where I live it’s about 8.5 , not sure if that’s good, it’s gone from 4 to 8.5 though in the last week.

Its really hard for me to say.

My area is >5 per 100,000. Others areas relatively nearby are higher and i suspect will always be higher.

I would start worried over 20 per 100000 possibly.

Although i think its also speed of increase thats the biggest concern.

And also it could be 20 per 100000 but made up of a small number of households.

And where its spread is important too.

299 cases in Northampton for instance. That will most likely grow quite a lot but its probably more easily contained than some outbreaks.

My area is

Thanks all. Interesting to see everyone has slightly different levels. I know I feel very comfortable at under 5, quite comfortable even up to 15, then I feel we need to get a bit more careful. But I'm aware I'm quite risk averse and personally can feel selfishly less concerned higher numbers when they're on the other side of the borough (i.e. less likely to be in our supermarkets, playgrounds, park etc).

As far as I can see, we only identify about 1/3 of cases and suspect the other 2/3 are there. Which rate are you discussing here?

We’re in a VERY touristy area. We were 3 per 100k for a week or so, went down to 1 and now back to 3 again with 13 cases.
Surprising as with a ballooning population I’d expect it to be higher...

The BBC says average is currently 5 per 100K in the UK...

Doesn't really matter to me as I've had covid, I have thought all along we need to let it run its course, protecting the vulnerable (a bad recession will ultimately kill more people prematurely - poor living conditions, suicides). There's been no cases in our town for 6 weeks

We have 14 per 100000 at the moment. I would feel very comfortable if it would under 8 in uk because then I could visit my country without a need for two week quarantine.

When they say x cases per 100,000 is that adding all cases per week and dividing by 7?

My la has had 2 cases in 14 days. Population of 120k.

I thought at some point they'd said countries with more than 16/100k would be removed from safe travel but that never stayed at that.

I agree though it would be much better to have a clear

At x/100k we will do
At y/100k we will
At z/100k we will .......

It would remove all the uncertainty and may help to naturally manage some of the behaviours in higher rate areas because people can see the risks coming and know x y and z could happen and have a chance to change it before it gets out of control.

I’m in a local lockdown area. The council area has 21 in 100,000 but my actual town has 8 in 100,000. Nothings changed here. Everyone’s out living life as before. These local lockdowns are ludicrous. I can’t go to my mums garden but I can go the pub If the rules made more sense, I think more people would follow them!

I’ve not changed my life in anyway bar i now meet my parents & friends in the park as opposed to their safe & not busy gardens 🙄

Where I am it’s less than 1. 🤷‍♀️

@InsaneInTheViralMembrane

Where I am it’s less than 1. 🤷‍♀️

Your not alone @InsaneInTheViralMembrane :)

Based on the last (pretty much) complete week ending last Sunday, less than 1 case per 100,000 in:

Rochford 0.00
Daventry 0.00
Redcar and Cleveland 0.00
Barrow-in-Furness 0.00
Hastings 0.00
Eastleigh 0.00
Bracknell Forest 0.00
Mid Devon 0.00
North Devon 0.00
Teignbridge 0.00
Forest of Dean 0.00
Wyre Forest 0.00
South Somerset 0.59
Swale 0.67
Exeter 0.76
Waverley 0.79
Test Valley 0.79
East Suffolk 0.80
Sedgemoor 0.81
Chichester 0.83
North Kesteven 0.86
Crawley 0.89
Scarborough 0.92
North Norfolk 0.95

and almost 50 more under 2 per 100,000

Staffordshire Moorlands 1.02
Basildon 1.07
Uttlesford 1.10
East Cambridgeshire 1.11
Basingstoke and Deane 1.13
Kingston upon Hull, City of 1.15
North Lincolnshire 1.16
East Riding of Yorkshire 1.17
Redditch 1.17
Gosport 1.18
Wealden 1.24
Epsom and Ewell 1.24
Bolsover 1.24
North East Lincolnshire 1.25
West Berkshire 1.26
Malvern Hills 1.27
King's Lynn and West Norfolk 1.32
East Devon 1.37
Derbyshire Dales 1.38
Medway 1.44
Torridge 1.46
Torbay 1.47
Plymouth 1.53
North Warwickshire 1.53
Colchester 1.54
Shropshire 1.55
Northumberland 1.55
Bath and North East Somerset 1.55
Adur 1.56
Amber Valley 1.56
Winchester 1.60
Sevenoaks 1.66
New Forest 1.67
Rushcliffe 1.68
Cheltenham 1.72
Fareham 1.72
Craven 1.75
West Devon 1.79
Worthing 1.81
Canterbury 1.81
Mansfield 1.83
Darlington 1.87
South Cambridgeshire 1.89
Lewes 1.94

The England overall figure for the week is just under 10, with 247 / 315 LA areas in England having a rate lower than this.

A relatively small number of Council areas, with most likely high levels of testing, really drive the overall weekly rate per 100,000 up.

So for the same week at the other end of the scale

Oldham 104.59
Pendle 82.51
Blackburn with Darwen 73.48
Leicester 68.88
Bradford 54.65
Swindon 49.51
Burnley 44.98
Rochdale 44.51
Calderdale 44.45
Preston 43.32
Tameside 37.97
Northampton 37.84
Manchester 37.44
Kirklees 30.24
Bolton 28.86
Wellingborough 28.86
Middlesbrough 27.66
Hyndburn 25.91
Luton 25.82
Carlisle 25.76
Newark and Sherwood 25.32
Stockport 25.22
Bury 25.13
Sandwell 24.66
Trafford 24.44
Salford 24.34
Corby 23.54
Birmingham 21.98

sorry about the list formatting

I'm in Germany and the lockdown criteria - local or national - is 50/100000 population

Seems reasonable, especially as treatment is so much better now, so death rate etc is lower

Additionally lockdown would result from a combination of risk factors in a German

"traffic LIght System"
Currently green

Stricter containment measures come with each colour level:

Yellow - any 2 of 3:
. R >1.1 for 3 days
. 7-day incidence of 20 / 100,000 cases
. >15% of ICU beds occupied by COVID patients

Red - any 2 of 3:
. R >1.3 for 3 days
. 7-day incidence of 30 / 100,000 cases
. >25% of ICU beds occupied by COVID patients

Boys is the cases per 100k averaged out?

My town is on there as 1.6 ish (so I'm not outing myself )

It had 2 cases over that week with a population of 120k.

So therefore a town with population of 100k where it says 100/100k has had 100 cases in a week in total as opposed to average of 100 cases a day?

@itsgettingweird

Boys is the cases per 100k averaged out?

My town is on there as 1.6 ish (so I'm not outing myself )

It had 2 cases over that week with a population of 120k.

So therefore a town with population of 100k where it says 100/100k has had 100 cases in a week in total as opposed to average of 100 cases a day?

@itsgettingweird in that instance:

2 / 120,000 * 100,000 - so 1.67 , rounded to 1.7

The calculation for each in that list uses the number of cases with a specimen date for w/e Sunday 9th - so its a weekly ratio.

The case number itself comes from the last full download file - so the one published yesterday - from the official dashboard site

We are up to 5 per 100,000. It was 2 or 3 a couple of weeks ago. It's still only around 15 cases for my LA.

I felt better when it was lower and even 0 for at least a week.

It's interesting that everyone so far has quite low rates, whereas there are descriptions of people carryimg on as normal in some areas that have restrictions and far more cases.

I think that with local lockdowns being the preferred strategy for handling breakouts they need to look at how some of the larger LA’s are handled.

For example, we are in South Birmingham. A part of an LA of over 1 million people. Very low incidence throughout in our area (which would be large enough to count as its own LA elsewhere in the country). I know you can’t pick and choose but I would hate to have schools closed in our vicinity due to spiralling rates at the other side of the City.