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 📈 📉 📊 👍

@Derbygerbil

School buses andd classroom tend to have the same group of people so masks are not required....

True, but then let’s drop the pretence that the “bubble” is any less than the entire school.... There are 1,500 pupils at my daughter’s school!

And they’ll be packed far more closely on a bus than they would be even in a small classroom!

@Derbygerbil I think that actually goes a step further. I'm in a fairly rural county; our small market town has three secondary schools - so upwards of 4,000 DCs. The school buses bring in kids from all three schools on the same buses.

Same.

It was actually a mini government U turn this one. Initially they said masks on school buses, then no need, and then back to masks : which must be removed and disposed of safely once at school.

Yes @boys3 ours share buses with another large secondary. There's to be seating plans but goodness knows who'll be informing that.

*enforcing that

Seating plan on a bus, sure that'll make the world of difference

There are a few quick saliva tests which could be near to being valid tests e.g. Yale
news.yale.edu/2020/08/15/yales-rapid-covid-19-saliva-test-receives-fda-emergency-use-authorization

However I don’t know any now. It would be good to have now for the schools.

The Quidel at home antigen test apparently has 96% sensitivity, can be done in 15 mins. American again. However they are all being fast tracked so wise to be a bit cautious about them. These could really be game changers though. If they are cheap and effective enough!

www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/the-push-to-deploy-at-home-antigen-tests-for-covid-19-67831

@BigChocFrenzy

The last report I read was that neither the saliva test nor the LamPORE rapid swab tests have been properly benchmarked to check their accuracy

Anyone know if this has been done recently ?

I don't. There was an article in bbc news a while back where they demonstrated and the journalist had the test. That was the last I heard.

And tbh I usually hear a lot about trials at this hospital on radio as it's a city hospital that serves my town which in the surrounding counties they usually serve.

Can we talk about the plasma treatment issue?

Us says yes, who says they are going to fast (likely given trump needs good news for November) but what do we say does anyone know? I know it was part of the discovery trail? Have we any results at all that have been published and any sense of early indications that it works or not? Or is it all too early to say?

I know that an area near me had a trial where many children were tested both with a normal test and a saliva test in July. Not children who were ill, just a random snap shot of children.

I can ask a Gp friend who it was run by.

Southampton has been trialling a saliva test since late June. www.gov.uk/government/news/new-saliva-test-for-coronavirus-piloted-in-southampton

Test frequecy more valuable than very high reliability. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7325181/

[quote alreadytaken]Southampton has been trialling a saliva test since late June. www.gov.uk/government/news/new-saliva-test-for-coronavirus-piloted-in-southampton

Test frequecy more valuable than very high reliability. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7325181/[/quote]
That's the one I was referencing above!

Yes I'm a bit confused about convalescent plasma. I thought it was definitely shown to help hospitalised patients and that was why the NHS Blood and Transplant organisation were frantically calling for volunteers. I nearly got involved but then they decided that it was only worth using people who'd been really ill (fair enough).

But in the BBC report I've just read on Trump's push it says the efficacy isn't proven yet - ?

havent seen anything published on plasma, just some murmuring suggesting it looked useful. Cant even remember where I saw the odd comments though, will take a look.

853 new cases today compared to 713 last Monday. And 4 deaths v 3 last week.

FWIW, 853 positive cases today. Down on last few days, but it's Monday, so that was to be expected. Up from 713 last Monday and 816 the previous, but down from 938 the week before that!

I say "FWIW" because testing numbers haven't been updated since the 20th so it's hard to put cases into any sort of context. Grrrr.

Numbers in hospital continue slowly down in every region in England, admissions steady.

One of the 4 deaths announced today took place in April!

Looks like face coverings are about to be mandated in Scottish high schools in all non classroom areas and school transport. Which might help a wee bit. There's already some primary classes been told to self isolate and in an additional needs school in Dundee there's now 17 members of staff and 2 children tested positive.
Also Scotland carried out it's highest daily number of tests this weekend. What's concerning is that people struggled to book drive in tests, with people in Glasgow being directed to testing centres in England and someone in Ayreshire, directed to Belfast .
This is only 2 weeks after schools opened and while still in summer. If testing can't keep up, then the tracing system falls apart.

"There is some limited evidence that patients might benefit from the use of convalescent plasma, and the clinical trials are needed to confirm whether such transfusions are safe and effective." taken from Imperial website that has this talk

Although Guys were also claiming to be leading the trial???? www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/news/uk-blood-plasma-covid-19-trial/

Something very odd has happened to the death figures in the last 2 days

all covid +ve / number of these deaths number of these deaths
deaths within 60 days within 28 days
8/20/2020 61 26 6
8/21/2020 92 13 2
8/22/2020 81 30 17
8/23/2020 5 3 4
8/24/2020 4 3 3

Suddenly, still with cases around 1000, the deaths have plummeted even further. How?

Stats are [[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/911588/COVID-19_Death_Series_20200824.xlsx here] in case this is too confusing.

Just how?

Sorry, when I posted the message it chewed up the figures!

Problem with plasma trials trials is going to be first collecting it - then getting it to people promptly. We are not getting many severe cases so not many people to try it on. America has lots of people to try it but is not generally well set up for clinical trials.

It can be stored for 3 years so there will be results sometime.

Deaths have been low for ages

@herecomesthsun

Something very odd has happened to the death figures in the last 2 days

all covid +ve / number of these deaths number of these deaths
deaths within 60 days within 28 days
8/20/2020 61 26 6
8/21/2020 92 13 2
8/22/2020 81 30 17
8/23/2020 5 3 4
8/24/2020 4 3 3

Suddenly, still with cases around 1000, the deaths have plummeted even further. How?

Stats are [[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/911588/COVID-19_Death_Series_20200824.xlsx here] in case this is too confusing.

Just how?

That is, I suspect, caused by the normal PHE reporting cycle which basically doesn't report over the weekend.

The NHS hospital numbers are super low now, single digits for the last 2 weeks. Anything above that is PHE, which is outside hospital, and has always run on a cycle of larger numbers on tues/weds and super low ones on Sun/Mon, which is what you are seeing the effect of there. The 60 day+ numbers will go up over the next couple of days.

That said, deaths and hospital admissions are trundling down.

Apologies if this has been covered already - and if it's blatantly obvious.

The daily cases by nation don't add up to the total for today or yesterday. Today:

Daily cases = 853

Yet England = 758, NI = 200, Scotland = 66 and Wales = 19. Giving a total of 1043.

Yesterday's was only 19 different.

I expect I'm being dense :)