Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 16

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 16 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Uk dashboard deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - 4 nations, English regions & LAs
MSAO Map of English cases
[[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/909430/Contain_framework_lower_tier_local_authority__14_August_2020.pdf
Slides & data UK govt pressers
UK added daily by PHE & DHSC
R estimates UK & English regions
PHE Surveillance report infections & watchlists every Thursday
ONS England infection surveillance reports
ONS UK death stats released each Tuesday
ECDC rolling 14-day incidence EEA & UK
Daily ECDC country detail UK
WHO dashboard
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 📈 📉 📊 👍

@Littlebelina good point about cold storage. In fact, storage generally as more people will be classed as vulnerable than usual (over 50s) plus its a two part vaccine. Then if they're rolling it out to everyone.

[quote PatriciaHolm]**@herecomesthesun* Yes, but we are talking about cases in England by specimen date not by date announced. See attached, from @rp131* on Twitter. Because cases announced always actually come from a variety of specimen dates, the overall pattern at the moment is pretty flat.[/quote]
just to add to this -based on the same date set but just looking at the last few weeks, using a narrower axis and showing just the rolling average.

Again this is just based on figures for England

The seven day average stood at 738 on August 4th

It then jumped to 932 on August 11th driven largely by 1351 cases on Monday 10th and 1208 on Tuesday 12th. For reference the last time England had at least 1351 cases in a single day was 2nd June.

Cases stayed over 1000 for each day that week and by Sat 15th the 7 day average peaked at 986.

Since then the seven day rolling average has fallen back slightly so by 25th August it stood at 970. Today saw another 118 cases added to the 25th August total, but only 14 to 24th August, and 7 to 23rd August, and thereafter net negatives back to 1st August. So we should be just about there in terms of cases for the 25th.

Overall therefore the numbers at the moment on that seven day basis are pretty much flat.

What the next few days will bring, particularly with tomorrow being a Bank Holiday, we'll have to wait and see. However we also need to view these in the context of hospitalisations (low and flat) as well as the picture from the ongoing ONS survey

And lots of evidence that transmission is from people, virtually none (and that dubious) that anyone has got it from surfaces.

Did anyone see a conclusion on how the recent NZ outbreak started? I recall they traced a chain back to a cold storage warehouse employee but couldn't work out where he had caught it. It was being hypothesised it could have been on the freight. I just googled but couldn't find anything about it.

Re NZ I think they ruled out freight/surfaces. But they have no idea how it came in. Very odd.

Sorry if this has been discussed recently but what are covid hospital admissions at the moment? I can't understand the app or seem to sort it by regions.

NZ they said was the strain found in Australia, so they ruled out the cold storage. An Australian colleague suggested they also ruled out links with quarantine facilities so it most likely spread from smugglers / drug dealers. I haven't found anything to say that they ruled out a quarantine facility link, nor even considered smugglers, but apparently it isn't that uncommon for there to still be some boats between Australia and New Zealand.

The numbers aren't as bad as I'd feared today, have to just hope it isn't test result delays!!

@boys3 and @PatriciaHolm

If the recent daily figures are generally over 1000 and rising every day, then it seems a bit foolhardy to assume that they are likely to be going down. I would think it more likely that @Shitfuckoh is right that more cases will get added on and it does look a bit more like an upward trend, but thankfully not rising very rapidly yet.

@boogiebogie

Sorry if this has been discussed recently but what are covid hospital admissions at the moment? I can't understand the app or seem to sort it by regions.

It doesn't get updated at the weekends, but for England, 7 day average of admissions as of 26th was 45 per day, down from 50 a week ago and 59 a fortnight ago. People in hospital (England again) 7 day average is 468, down from 542 and 590 a week/2 weeks ago respectively.

Healthcare by regions is here - change the region at the top - but again not updated over weekend.

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare?areaType=nhsregion&areaName=London

Hi from NZ

Because our case numbers are so low, we get to hear about every new case and how the virus was transmitted in each instance, which is interesting. In our most recent outbreak, which is all one large cluster, most cases have been transmitted person to person in places such as churches, workplaces and households. A few cases have been caught during one bus journey, which has led to masks being mandated on public transport from today. The source of this large new cluster has still not been found. It's a mystery.

One interesting case that has come to light is an infected maintenance worker in one of the isolation hotels for returning Kiwis. It has been established that this worker used the lift shortly after an asymptomatic person (who tested positive shortly afterwards) had used it. Whether there were still small droplets in the air or whether it was through touching the same surfaces has not been established.

There has been no suggestion of drug smugglers being the source here. I have never heard of boats of drugs coming from Australia; I'm not sure it's a thing. There is 1000km of ocean between us. The genomic sequencing for out recent outbreak has been linked to the UK and US, not Aus.

theconversation.com/genome-sequencing-tells-us-the-auckland-outbreak-is-a-single-cluster-except-for-one-case-144721

This article is good on the source of the new cluster. This strain has been found in Australia (sorry I was wrong) as well as many other countries and is thought to originate in the UK.

[quote herecomesthsun]**@boys3* and @PatriciaHolm*

If the recent daily figures are generally over 1000 and rising every day, then it seems a bit foolhardy to assume that they are likely to be going down. I would think it more likely that @Shitfuckoh is right that more cases will get added on and it does look a bit more like an upward trend, but thankfully not rising very rapidly yet.[/quote]
@herecomesthsun

what is being said , based on the published data, is that for England the rolling 7 day average up to a date where cases are pretty much confirmed is not going up. The basis for this being that 970 is a lower number than 986.

The numbers are on the graph in the 20:05 post.

The rolling seven day average is not taken beyond the 25th as quite correctly more cases are highly likely to be added to that date and the specimen dates beyond that.

Therefore this is not a forecast as to the future but rather an assessment of what the current data is telling us.

This would indeed be foolhardy if cases in England were consistently over the 1000 mark, and that equally would call into question the mathematics that produces a seven day average figure below 1000. However cases in England are not consistently over 1000 hence the assessment based on the current data is both informed and balanced.

@Bifflepants - yes, I didn't find anything to back it up either, most NZ smuggling is through freight. There was a drugs yacht seized in New Caledonia back in April that looks to be linked with South America, and another one less than 2 weeks ago nearer to Australia that was a pickup from a Chinese trawler. So there is definitely some activity, but whether any reached NZ shores undetected is a different matter. More fishing boats, pleasure craft etc to keep the navy busy than might be expected: www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:168.0/centery:-32.5/zoom:4.
By the way, the UK genome link is often the case because the UK has over 30k genomes mapped, it doesn't necessarily imply a direct link.

Figures for the UK - as distinct from England - are averaging a little > 1,000 see attached
and the 14-day incidence level has slowly been creeping up to now 23 / 100,000

but the keyword is "slowly"
The situation needs watching, but is far from critical atm

Anyone know what is going on with Trafford? We seem to be coming out of Restrictions on Wednesday, but since they had the data they're using for that, cases have spiked again. Can I relax, or are we likely to be put straight back into restrictions?

970 may be lower than 986 - but it's higher than 8 of the previous days. This is one time when I prefer not to have 7 day moving averages as that obscures the serious outbreaks. I am personally more interested in what the underlying trend is across the country than a total that is distorted by a serious outbreak. So what I see is a slow moving increase - supplemented at times by large outbreaks in factories where there is clearly not adequate control but not confined to that. However as I keep repeating the position varies a lot across the country. Sadly Great Yarmouth is no longer clear and illustrates both the factory issue and the problem with complacency in areas that have not been seriously affected.

Places like Bournemouth, North Devon, Pembrokeshire are now seeing small numbers of cases too.

For those interested in international comparisons I was sent this article recently theconversation.com/how-worried-should-we-be-about-the-coronavirus-resurgence-in-europe-three-experts-weigh-in-143858

and a reminder that diseases frequently stick around for a long time but become more manageable - the plague still exists. edition.cnn.com/2020/08/19/health/bubonic-plague-2020-california-wellness/index.html

Trafford is coming out of restrictions because one Tory MP is a fool. www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/traffords-coronavirus-infection-rate-risen-18852007

Sensible people will continue to take care.

Busy few days and I fell off the old thread!

Too much to keep up with but will try and catch up from here.

Once again thank you to all those posting facts and current studies to help wheedle out the specutaltion

A belated thank you to whoever posted the information about
www.covidmessenger.com/about/
I signed up to 5 areas, where I live, where I work, and where the majority of my learners come from. Rather worryingly numbers are rising where I work and in the nearest large town, from where about half my learners come. But it’s useful to know.

Hello everyone

Just to say how much I appreciate these threads and the signposting to all the data!

I wanted to double check I am correct that there isn’t a specific % attached to when local lockdowns are imposed? Bit concerned about my borough - cases are doubling week on week, positivity % also jumped to over 2 and its just in time for schools back ( my concern here is increased likelihood of schools have to close bubbles etc). We’ve obviously moved up some sort of scale as lots of comms from the council and apparently increased testing. Interestingly comms identify young people and returning holiday makers as the source of the increase.

Anecdotally I’ve also for the first time since April know of two people testing positive ( both very cautious and both completely asymptomatic, tested as hyper cautious and had been doing an exercise class). Slightly concerningly test and trace took 6 days to contact them. Hoping that’s an outlier.

Has anyone read this NY Times article about tests being too sensitive? (It’s a really fascinating article actually) Does anyone know if the same would apply to the tests we use here?

www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html

I'm another person in an area with increasing numbers. The naice villages and suburbs on the outskirts of the city are increasingly turning blue on the map- which is unlikely to be linked to factories and more likely to be young people ( and older people) socialising. Leeds has moved from 10th to 4th on the messenger list.

A belated thank you to whoever posted the information about www.covidmessenger

A thanks from me too. Did I see that it was a MN poster running this website?
This thread is a great resource.

I was just reading that same article @marceline. I wasn't quite clear either whether it was taking about the swab tests that are widely used in both the US and UK, or the new saliva ones that are much quicker, but not yet widely in use in either county. And this issue of how many magnification cycles you do to detect an infection isn't one I've heard of before.

It makes you wonder though whether some of these seemingly random small cases popping up all over the place could be false positives, especially ones like the one someone's just described in this thread where someone with no symptoms and no known contact with a case has managed to test positive. False positives would of course explain rising cases and falling hospital admissions, which is still what we're seeing.

[quote alreadytaken]970 may be lower than 986 - but it's higher than 8 of the previous days. This is one time when I prefer not to have 7 day moving averages as that obscures the serious outbreaks. I am personally more interested in what the underlying trend is across the country than a total that is distorted by a serious outbreak. So what I see is a slow moving increase - supplemented at times by large outbreaks in factories where there is clearly not adequate control but not confined to that. However as I keep repeating the position varies a lot across the country. Sadly Great Yarmouth is no longer clear and illustrates both the factory issue and the problem with complacency in areas that have not been seriously affected.

Places like Bournemouth, North Devon, Pembrokeshire are now seeing small numbers of cases too.

For those interested in international comparisons I was sent this article recently theconversation.com/how-worried-should-we-be-about-the-coronavirus-resurgence-in-europe-three-experts-weigh-in-143858

and a reminder that diseases frequently stick around for a long time but become more manageable - the plague still exists. edition.cnn.com/2020/08/19/health/bubonic-plague-2020-california-wellness/index.html[/quote]
I am personally more interested in what the underlying trend is across the country

@alreadytaken completely agree with this. The decile figures show an gradual increase across a wider range of LAs, countered by falls at the very top end.

The graph compares the cases per 100,000 for w/e 12 July (low week) and w/e 23rd August spread across every English LA area. So reading left to right lowest rate to highest rate - the gap across a large swathe is clear. The second graph is the same thing but with a much smaller y axis range to give a better view of the majority of areas.

I'll have a look at individual LA movements and show that in a bit.