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 📈 📉 📊 👍

What an idiot I automatically signed off with my name, I have asked for that one to be deleted, here it is again:

Hello everyone, I always read this thread and it's ver interesting. I have been pondering a few things, I wonder if anyone could help - apologies if they are silly questions!

1. I check the London hospital deaths quite often, and it splits them into 'positive test' and 'no positive test'. No positive test meaning they haven't been tested, not that they have tested negative right? If so, how are people in hospital, and so ill they pass away, but have not been tested? Or if they get a negative result why are they classed as covid deaths?

2. They have adjusted the criteria for a Covid death to have a time limit of 28 days. I understand the logic here, but surely many people are in hospital for over six weeks with it before dying of it, so would this not also cut out a lot of people?

Another double data hit. 2,343 cases added in England, and although Northampton accounts for 236 of them that still leaves over 2000 to be accounted for.

Last full week (w/e 9th Aug) looks to be almost done, another 140 odd cases added to it today taking England to just under 5700 cases for that week, almost identical to w/e 21st June, and 50% higher than the weekly low achieved in second week July.

All that though needs still to be seen in the context of other key measures - hospitalisations, deaths, 111 calls - all of which as patricia highlighted earlier of look stable at the moment.

The main contributors including Northampton today still account for c50% of cases added in today's reporting.

not sure how that of crept in

and a shout out for all those LAs that contributed zero cases to the figures published today. There is a longer list of those with just a single case.

@Justjoinedforthis

1. Covid tests aren't 100% reliable for giving a positive result, especially beyond the first few days. There is apparently a characteristic pattern to the infection in the lungs, so doctors diagnosed some people via x-ray instead of a positive tests. It's worth noting that the same is not true of care home deaths, often GPs have not visited the patient, so there has been some guesswork - in early days missing lots of probable covid cases, then some ever-changing. When people have existing conditions and are frail, it would be rare to do an autopsy and it sounds like this kind of guesswork as to the ultimate cause of death is normal process.
2. Deaths after 28 days will still be tracked by ONS, who have the unenviable task of bringing clarity over which excess deaths are attributable to covid / lockdown failing to treat other conditions / lockdown or recession depression etc. They just won't be on the WHO report, so it's comparable with other countries. There are wild reporting differences globally, but this change brings England in line with our closest European countries Scotland, Wales, NI, Germany, France, etc etc who have all only ever been counting to 28 days.

@clareykb

Can anyone clarify something for me(I'm a long term lurker who isn't great at maths). Am keeping an eye on rates in out LA on the North East which has been fairly low no more than 1-3 per day Today 8 have been added but when you look at the data the specimen dates range over a week does this just suggest a slight delay in testing at is it something to worry about (la is Gateshead) if anyone is super in to data and wants to take a look!

I need to update this with the figures added today but, Middlesborough aside, the North East is not a bad place - either C19 wise or indeed in general terms :)

Gateshead still below 5 cases per 100,000 when today's figs taken into account

My LA is one of the zero cases which is reassuring!

"this change brings England in line with our closest European countries Scotland, Wales, NI, Germany, France, etc etc who have all only ever been counting to 28 days"

This is except for the 5% or so of COVID patients who stay in ICU and hospital longer than 28 days and die there
Most countries would include them, as I hope England still does.

@SeekingCoffee33

More digging. It could be rubbish but the local paper states:

“With more than 2,000 people employed at the campus, the positive tests account for around a tenth of the overall workforce.”

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.northamptonchron.co.uk/health/everything-we-now-know-about-northampton-coronavirus-outbreak-greencore-where-nearly-300-cases-have-been-detected-2942714%3famp

Unless they have made the same mistake I thought I had then it could be that not all staff have been tested if only 1,300 tests have been conducted.

Could also be an error but it does make me wonder.

Does it work on a shift basis? 1300/2100 account for approx 2/3 employees.

So either some shifts haven't had contact or the other 800 people aren't involved in the same work or same department?

Personally I'd still want to test them but maybe they've tested shop floor workers and not those who are distribution and work in lorries or someth8ng?

@boys3

and a shout out for all those LAs that contributed zero cases to the figures published today. There is a longer list of those with just a single case.

My towns on there.

And you're welcome

Some places are improving - like Bedford and Hackney is going in the right direction at last. Coventry is not looking good and Hounslow has had quite a spike recently, as has Richmond. At least in Hounslow they seem to be working hard, hopefully a big spike then a decline. www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/london-coronavirus-part-hounslow-theres-18752099

Oldham is still bad.

Just places I chanced to notice and have kept an eye on.

big not like Northampton, obviously - just large enough to take an interest.

@MRex thanks so much that’s very helpfuk.

This is except for the 5% or so of COVID patients who stay in ICU and hospital longer than 28 days and die there
Most countries would include them, as I hope England still does.

The hospital death numbers on the NHS site have not been restated so they would still include people dying in ICU irrespective of the timing of the COVID test.

As far as I can see, the change has only impacted PHE reported non hospital deaths which are being added on to the NHS numbers. The vast majority of them happen / have happened in care homes.

@boys3 I can't get that picture of the zero cases to load for some reason, can you tell me how I can find it.... or tell me if any of East Sussex is zero?

[quote twinmum2017]@boys3 I can't get that picture of the zero cases to load for some reason, can you tell me how I can find it.... or tell me if any of East Sussex is zero?
[/quote]
What la in East Sussex?

My town has now averaged down. 2 cases over 3 weeks.

@twinmum2017

Lewes added 6; Wealden 3
Eastbourne; Hastings and Rother all 1 each

In terms of the last four full weeks : so for week endings 19 July; 26th July, 2nd August and 9th August ; plus this week reported so far - in reality for this week although its Friday confirmed cases by actual date of test are only up to Wednesday, and there will be more to get added to that day

Eastbourne : 20; 8; 10; 4 so looks to be going in the right direction, and then this week so far 1

Lewes : 5; 4; 2 and 2; and this week so far 8 (so up somewhat,

Hastings : 4; 3; 3 and 0; then this week so far 1

Rother 1; 1; 0; and 5; then this week so far 1

Wealden 9; 8; 6 and 1 and then this week so far 5

You can track any council and see a graph at the official PHE / govt website ; link for Wealden coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases?areaType=ltla&areaName=Wealden

@itsgettingweird we are Wealden.

Thank you @boys3. I'd love to be seeing zero, but not to be.

Exam fiasco

For those interesting in the maths model and how badly the Ofqal model does, I've found the Ofqal report and quickly analysed it, on

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amibeing_unreasonable/3994320-A-Level-disasters?msgid=99158570#

They correlated (checked accuracy) by using the model to predict the 2019 results

35-55% of grades are wrong, depending on subject, either too low or too high
I posted the accuracy for some subjects

[quote twinmum2017]@itsgettingweird we are Wealden.

Thank you @boys3. I'd love to be seeing zero, but not to be.[/quote]
Boys beat me to it anyway

@Choux

From today's Covid surveillance report: several areas including london and the Northwest are showing reduced levels of sero prevalence in blood donors. The report provides two possible reasons:-

1 donors over 70 are now included and they were prohibited from donating during lockdown
*
2 Waning immunity may also be a contributing factor to the reduced prevalence.*

One to watch in future reports as this may confirm that immunity can be lost in as little as three months.

Surely if they know how many donors were over 70 (I'm guessing not loads?) they can compare without these donors to see if this is a factor in the reduced sero prevalence or not? Must be easy to find out?

I'm not sure I understand (2) - waning immunity being a contributing factor to reduced sero prevalence - I thought the two were, largely speaking, thought to be the same thing. I.e. we have been measuring 'immunity' i.e. likelihood of not catching CV, by measuring these antibodies? What else is our concept of immunity if not this?

Aware these may be silly questions!

Should be more precise - I meant to say 'surely if they know WHICH donors were over 70' (and what their sero levels were!)

Have to set you on to my results which are so unjust!

Re immunity but wrt T cells, rather than antibodies,
here is a scientist specialising in vaccines & the immune system:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1293344524731691008.html

Shane Crotty@profshanecrotty

1/ There are various tweets misinterpreting COVID-19 “pre-existing immunity” and making dangerous claims about herd immunity.

Since many of those claims refer to our scientific papers,
we will reiterate the facts.

2/ Our 1st scientific paper showed that ~50% of unexposed people have T cells that recognized SARS-CoV-2 already doi.org/10.1016/j.cell….

The most obvious conclusion was these were memory T cells from previous common cold coronavirus infections,
but that was not directly shown.

3/ Our 2nd paper, very recently published,
showed that these were memory T cells from previous common cold coronavirus infections
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/04/science.abd3871

Five other labs have also published related findings
doi.org/10.1038/s41577…

4/ These observations about pre-existing T cell immunity (also call "crossreactive immune memory",
which avoids the word "immunity" that sometimes gets misinterpreted as “protective immunity”
[sorry, immunology is complicated] )
are important because...

5/ ...these memory cells MAY impact people’s responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection,
or COVID-19 vaccines.

6/ Therefore, we have pointed out that these coronavirus crossreactive immune memory T cells are important,
to pay attention to in human COVID-19 studies this year.

7/ We SPECULATE that it is conceivable that these T cells may potentially reduce COVID-19 disease severity,
based on things we know about flu and T cells.

8/ These are only speculations (no data)
and because of their potential importance it is key for scientists to test these ideas, as quickly as possible.

While scientists are racing as fast as possible,
sophisticated research like this usually takes a lot of time and resources.

9/ We, and other labs, are working hard on these unanswered questions.

10/ Additionally, even if our most optimistic speculations about crossreactive T cell memory were found to be correct,
it would mean that just as many people would get infected with SARS-CoV-2, but fewer would become severely ill and die from COVID-19.

11/ T cells generally don’t completely prevent infections, they limit disease
(make it shorter and/or less serious).

Thus, wearing a mask is much more effective than hoping you and the people around you have pre-existing T cell memory.
Wearing a mask stops infections.