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 📈 📉 📊 👍

Thanks for that MRex

It's interesting to see that that graph shows that there were a large number of respiratory outbreaks in schools last November/Dec. I remember mentioning it when there was discussion about the tracing back to last August and how there had been discussions in education about this and how glandular fever was tested for in large numbers.

Obviously that's just data and can be hypothesised against a hypothesis. But the data is showing to match an unusual pattern observed.

My LA made it into the top 50 last week but is back below 100 again this week, suggesting returning travellers or household transmission. Looking at the MSOA map, there isn't consistent spread across the borough.

Can anyone clever comment on the article on obesity in the Guardian today? There's another thread about it but only comment rather than analysis of stats, it is something like obesity increases your risk of death by 113 percent which is both terrifying and incomprehensible to me!

@chipshopElvis. Presume this is the article you mean? www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/26/obesity-increases-risk-of-covid-19-death-by-48-study-finds?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

It says the risk of dying is 48% higher if your are obese. The 113% increased risk is of ending up in hospital. But to put that in context, a man of the same age a you (if you're a woman) has roughly twice the risk you do. Double the risk is a 100% increased risk if you want to describe it that way - so if you're obese and your husband is the same age as you and isn't obese he still has a higher risk of dying than you do, and about the same risk of ending up in hospital.
.
And if you're relatively young (under 60 at least) the 48% increased risk is still an increase on a very low risk. At age 45 I think your risk of dying is around 1 in 1000. So being obese would put it up to around 1.5 in 1000, still very low.

You also double your risk for every 5 or 6 years older you are, so an obese 45 year old has about the same risk of dying as a non-obese 48 year old. So definitely not a reason to be calling for special protection for obese people - age is the overwhelming risk factor, with sex still more significant than obesity.

I think new cases today are 1048. But ••• ••• is making things difficult!

Can I ask please (as the government website seems to still be having problems) when I looked at it about half an hour ago it loaded today's cases as 1048 (eventually). It didn't load any other stats and now I can't get it to load again - it just reads N/A for everything.
Does anyone know if the 1048 is accurate for today or was that yesterday's figure? I can't remember.

That seems to be correct @Holdingtight. The PHE Twitter feed says so. I can't get the website to load at all though, so can't see local cases in my area.

@firefliess yes, and thank you so much! Needed a calm analysis rather than my blind panic reading of certain death!

So 7 day average holding steady ?

Another factory outbreak is being reported local to me in Norfolk (which until now has had very low infection rates). It's a chicken processing factory. 46 positives out of 300 tests so far. Total workforce of 600.

www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/almost-50-banham-poultry-workers-test-positive-for-coronavirus-1-6809803

@hopefulhalf

So 7 day average holding steady ?

From G Ranganathan's Twitter

7 average is up slightly, as last Weds was a low one on 812, so it's up again to where it was about 10 days ago which is the highest it's been in recent weeks - but numbers seem pretty steady.

[quote fadingfast]Another factory outbreak is being reported local to me in Norfolk (which until now has had very low infection rates). It's a chicken processing factory. 46 positives out of 300 tests so far. Total workforce of 600.

www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/almost-50-banham-poultry-workers-test-positive-for-coronavirus-1-6809803[/quote]
Yes just covered on main BBC news. Breckland added 12 cases today on the gov dashboard so expect to see quite a lot more feeding through over the next few days given the positive numbers being reported in the press. But hopefully stays localised and contained.

Beeb also announced an outbreak in Plymouth - up to 30 teenagers, 13 positive tests so far.

seven day average for cases in England (where geography concerned) improving a little after the surge in cases at the start of last week, Still well above where is was back in early / mid July, but as others have suggested potentially stabilising again.

geography confirmed, although some areas clearly remain a concern; getting all in a flap with the news from Norfolk.

"The service is currently operational but owing to technical difficulties, the data is taking longer than usual to load. We apologise for any inconvenience and are working to restore optimal speed as soon as possible."

As in never? Doesn't seem to load....

Worldometer is reporting 1048 new cases and 16 deaths.

Yesterday UK figures on Worldometer were 1184 and 16 deaths.

I couldn't get the Gov data to load yesterday and still the same today.

@Firefliess I notice in your link that in the USA from this year, obese people and elderly people will receive a double dose of the flu vaccine, due to generally weaker immune systems
and that it is thought they will too for COVID

Anyone know if there will also be a double flu vacine in the UK ?

I wonder also what counts as "elderly" here:
I'm a normal BMI, but age 64, hardly ever get colds etc, so I'll see what my GP advises when it comes to the COVID vaccine
So far, I've only ever had a single dose of flu vaccine, but as I'm getting on ....

Public Health Englandd@PHE*_uk

The COVID-19 dashboard is currently experiencing technical difficulties.

We can confirm that:

1,048 new positive cases have been recorded on Wednesday 26 August, giving a total of 328,846.

16 new deaths have been reported across the UK, giving a total of 41,465.

That Guardian report is about a meta-analysis.
Meta-analysis is what I do for a living (among other things).
There's no adjustment for age, no quality assessment (to identify which reports are more reliable than others). There are 2 studies that are huge outliers (for mortality, probably some of the other outcomes, too) so skew the results. It's a huge effort I respect but it's not a very informative picture, yet.

It looks like the obesity risk in the meta-analysis was based on who went to hospital or even who was in ICU; not based on all obese people in the community who get covid; or maybe it's a mix of both those who died at home & died at hospital. We don't know. The authors don't tell us.

From what I can work out (say, from ICNARC reports): age is like 3-6x more important than obesity as a risk factor. Obesity is exciting because it's something you can try to control, but it takes a long time to change, anyway.

I don't like obesity being called a 'major' risk factor when we don't know how much that risk is modified by age (don't know what the ages were of the patients in each primary study).

Germany weekly test summary

With tests slightly increasing to just over 1 million this week, the total number of positive cases are about the same as last week

Test positivity = 0.88%
7-day incidence = 10.2 / 100,000 population
4-day R-number = 0.85
7-day number = 0.93

Cases have been increasing since since mid-July, so this is encouraging,
but too early to state that cases are stable - we need at least another week to confirm this trend

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/NeuartigesCoronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-08-26-de.pdf??__blob=publicationFile

just over under 1 million this week

Vaccine shipment prep

Transport logistics are an obvious challenge to supply individual nations and the world.

UPS is building "freezer farms" for vaccine storage / shipment logistics, near to UPS air cargo hubs in the USA and Germany

These contain freezers set to -80C which are designed to store the more fragile vaccines, including those that are based on messenger RNA (mRNA) to produce viral proteins in the body.

Once produced, vaccines will be transported in specialized, well-insulated boxes, filled with dry ice or frozen carbon dioxide to one of the freezer farms

The 2 facilities together house 600 massive freezers, each capable of storing 48,000 vials of vaccine, so 28.8 million doses can be stored at any one time, while awaiting shipment.

www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-vaccine-nationalism-covid-19-us-germany-gavi/a-54634662

@MedSchoolRat that is a really good summary of the weaknesses of the report. Thank you.

that RKI documents shows, Berlin area excepted, quite a marked difference between the old East Germany and the rest of the country.