Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 15

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 15 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Uk dashboard deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - 4 nations, LAs, English regions
Slides & data UK govt pressers
UK added daily by PHE & DHSC
PHE Surveillance report infections & watchlists every Thursday with sep. infographic
ONS England infection surveillance report
ONS UK death stats each Tuesday
ECDC rolling 14-day incidence EEA & UK
Daily ECDC country detail UK
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 test positivity etc

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

Couple of interesting maps in the weekly test and trace report

This one is:

Proportion of people transferred to the contact tracing system who were reached by upper tier local authority (UTLA)
Figure 7: Percentage of cases reached and asked to provide details of recent close contacts by UTLA since Test and Trace began.

and then this one

Proportion of non-complex close contacts identified who were reached and asked to self-isolate by upper tier local authority
Figure 12: Percentage of non-complex contacts reached and asked to provide details of recent close contacts by UTLA since Test and Trace began.

Do you see any particular correlations @boys3? Forgive me, it's late, it's just all swirls of blue to me right now.

Boys It's difficult trying to estimate with limited data - and I wasn't sure if the end result was worth having !

All "daily" figures, whether deaths, hospitalisations, positive tests etc are likely a combination of figures from the last several days,
but for rough estimations, I take the daily figure

I was trying to get an idea of the number of daily positive cases, which would include people being tested more than once
because these positive cases seem to be what other countries are reporting, not people

So I wanted to try to get a better figure for comparison to other countries with rising cases, to better assess relative UK "risk", especially wrt quarantining holidaymakers,
as well as to get some idea of the difference between # positive cases and # new people

However, do I understand you that the positivity rate is 1.5% for England not 0.7% ?
If so, then UK dashboard daily tests ~ 190,000 would be ~ 2,850 positive tests
(as England has about 84% of the UK population and most tests, the other 3 nations having a different positivity would not significantly affect this figure)

Or have we a better way / data to estimate positive daily tests, or even weekly, in addition to the # people ?
< It's late and my brain has stopped >

Belgium has announced that their secondary school students will have to wear masks when they return in September

Belgium has the highest death / millions and highest population density in Europe (excluding the microstates)

• 2 related statistics which explain their greater caution

@PrayingandHoping

You can view the positivity rate for each country here, also viewable as a chart or map. It's interactive, so you can sort, add countries to compare (chart view) etc...

ourworldindata.org/grapher/positive-rate-daily-smoothed?tab=table&time=2020-07-01..latest

I think the figures in the surveillance report are number of tests, in the spreadsheet.

I can't read anything from that first map that @boys3 has posted. The areas where they are reaching the highest proportion of cases seem random to me. But the second map is more interesting - they appear to be reaching a much lower proportion of contacts in the urban, northern areas - ie the places where we also know that the largest outbreaks are. So there's something about these areas that means people are harder to contact and also more likely to catch Covid.

.... Or alternatively, @boys3's graph could be read as showing that track and trace works - three areas where they reach the highest proportion of contacts are the areas with the lowest rates of Covid

That should have read the areas where they reach the highest proportion... Not three

@boys3

Great. Thanks.

just to be clear they are NHS Test and Trace's graphs :). The thing that struck me - which tbh has already been shown - is the success rate for the complex cases - lots of darker shades on the first map; as opposed to the greater prevalence of lighter shades on the second. And as @Firefliess observed the generally lighter shades on the second map for the Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire areas.

However, do I understand you that the positivity rate is 1.5% for England not 0.7% ?

Yes from my reading of page 7 in the Test and Trace report released today

People tested, England
Between 6 August and 12 August, 431,268 people were newly tested for coronavirus (COVID-19), a decrease of 2% from the previous week. 6,616 new people had a positive result, an increase of 27% from the previous week

6616 / 431268 = 1.53%

This made the BBC news earlier (well the mid afternoon statistics slot) and was compared with the figure in the wk 10 report

5212 cases / 438404 = 1.19%

.

In other important information from the report tracking of contacts is getting worse with a delay in transferring some people into the system, and a small decline in the already poor performance in reaching contacts.

Also pillar 1 cases are increasing "In pillar 1, there was an increase of 34% in positive cases compared to the previous week. This is the first week there has been a notable increase in positive cases in pillar 1 since Test and Trace launched. " Pillar 1 is NHS testing. Difficult to know what this means as we dont know if these are admissions, testing before a planned elective admission or higher numbers presenting to a&e now the pubs are open. They could even be staff tests, staff are likely to be on a second or subsequent test.

@alreadytaken I think that might be because testing in outbreak locations is now classified as Pillar 1 not Pillar 2.
www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-test-and-trace-england-and-coronavirus-testing-uk-statistics-6-august-to-12-august-2020

From page 5:

Testing in England
NHS Test and Trace starts with an individual taking a test, either in pillar 1 (testing in hospitals and outbreak locations, pillar 2 (national swab testing) or pillar 4 (prevalence studies). Those who go on to test positive will have their case transferred to NHS Test and Trace for contact tracing.

In pillar 1, there was an increase of 34% in positive cases compared to the previous week. This is the first week there has been a notable increase in positive cases in pillar 1 since Test and Trace launched.

The twitter community is 99% sure the Northampton numbers got included into Pillar 1.

According to the current definitions:

NHS Test and Trace starts with an individual taking a test, either in pillar 1 (testing in hospitals and outbreak locations), pillar 2 (national swab testing) or pillar 4 (prevalence studies).

Northampton cases were detected privately, i.e. outside of the national swap testing program, and they related to an outbreak. As we know, PHE are not great with numbers so it is quite likely they have decided to add Northampton numbers into Pillar 1 based on a very literal reading of the definitions.

Thanks for the explanation. Anyone know when that started because quite obviously most outbreak testing is not included in pillar1 - and shouldnt be? I object to the description as "NHS track and trace" when it is not NHS btw - but starting to lump outbreaks in with hospital testing is just stupid.

"complex cases" are referred to PHE health protection teams. They are not handled by Dino Harding and her team of failures.

To be fair, "complex" cases are not really that complex. They relate to outbreaks at care homes, prisons, homeless hostels or schools. Arguably, contacts in those settings are much easier to trace than trying to track down transmissions in pubs/bars (let alone illegal raves).

publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2020/06/25/contact-tracing-complex-cases-through-nhs-test-and-trace/

But even pubs/bars/illegal raves are best handled at the local level. Of course, the contact rate will never be 90%+ but people who know the area have got the highest chance of success.

A homeless shelter is likely to be "complex" but I agree that most others handled locally are not. However test and trace is mainly contacting people who live with the infected person, their "success" rate for those who dont is even poorer than the published figures. The attendances at illegal raves and pubs will not even be counted as contacts, since the attendee wont be able to give their details even if they were inclined to do so, so the failure is far greater than it appears.

Someone who lives in the same area as an infected person may not be successful in reaching contacts either. However they would certainly know where to put a mobile testing unit to have a chance of finding the contacts and what Facebook pages to advertise its location on.

The government has replaced a system that would have worked if funded properly with a far more expensive system that is failing - and failing more than the published figures suggest. www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2484

Wales just announcing on tv that 90% of people give details of contacts and 90% of those are traced. Makes England's scheme look more pathetic.

Latest ONS infection survey is out. The rise in cases in July has levelled out:
The latest summary:
An estimated 24,600 people (95% credible interval: 16,900 to 33,800) within the community population in England had the coronavirus (COVID-19) during the most recent week, from 7 to 13 August 2020, equating to around 1 in 2,200 individuals

Previous week:
An estimated 28,300 people (95% credible interval: 19,000 to 40,700) within the community population in England had the coronavirus (COVID-19) during the most recent week, from 3 to 9 August 2020, equating to around 1 in 1,900 individuals

Still very low numbers though. It will all become more meaningful when they recruit the extra people ( or if infections go up, but hoping that won't happen!)

@wintertravel1980

But even pubs/bars/illegal raves are best handled at the local level. Of course, the contact rate will never be 90%+ but people who know the area have got the highest chance of success.

There was an illegal rave of 3000 just north of Bath about a month ago. People apparently travelled from Sheffield. None of the attendees were arrested and all allowed to disperse.