Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 17

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 17 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Uk dashboard deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - 4 nations, English regions & LAs
MSAO Map of English cases
Cases Tracker England Local Government
ONS MSAO Map English deaths
CovidMessenger live update by council district in England
Scot gov Daily data
Scotland TravellingTabby LAs, care homes, hospitals, tests, t&t
PH Wales LAs, tests, ONS deaths
NI Dashboard
UK govt pressers Slides & data
NHS t&t England & UK testing Weekly stats
R estimates UK & English regions
PHE Surveillance report infections & watchlists each Thursday
ONS England infection surveillance report each Friday
Datasets for ONS surveillance reports
ONS Roundup deaths, infections & economic reports
ECDC rolling 14-day incidence EEA & UK
Worldometer UK page
Our World in Data test positivity etc, DIY graphs
FT DIY graphs compare deaths, cases, raw / million pop
Covidly.com world summary & graphs

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

I got as far as adding ds to the test request and the screen is now frozen and no amount of refreshing or going back makes any difference. But there's no problem with testing huh bozo the stats are going to be totally skewed by lack of available tests.

Rafals my DS would have beej getting a weekly test if he was 2.

He pretty much got a temp once a week. Often only for a few hours and Calpol brought it down and it didn't go back up. But it would be above 39 degrees.

So glad he's grown out of it!

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay

That wouldn’t leave them much space to change it before Monday, sirfred. Perhaps if they crossed out some of the 30s now and left the rest until Sunday evening.

😂

Boris looks dreadful. Just watching the news now.

On the compliance point - I’ve been a bit surprised by the numbers of parents who have told me I’m being over cautious in testing my DS who has a high temperature and cough and particularly in keeping my other DC off. Maybe they would act differently if it was their children but the vast majority have said to me they wouldn’t keep the sibling off in those circumstances ( and not because of work issues which I have huge sympathy for - I am wfh, my boss is v unhappy but if I’d had to go out to work would have been very difficult).

Similarly I suspect many won’t adhere to the 6 including children in the numbers. These are all people who were very adherent during lockdown. It seems to be they don’t want to if they are also being told to go to work. And also now think the risk from covid is low.

Anyway hopefully we will get some compliance statistics at some point so we can see!

@Timeforanotherusername

Rafals my DS would have beej getting a weekly test if he was 2.

He pretty much got a temp once a week. Often only for a few hours and Calpol brought it down and it didn't go back up. But it would be above 39 degrees.

So glad he's grown out of it!

I have cough varient asthma, I feel the pain of a lot of parents right now. It’s going to be an interesting winter.

I feel like the government haven’t really got to grips with what their testing strategy is. Yet again, it feels a bit reactive rather than ‘we have a plan’.

@BighouseLittlemouse - any fever clearly needs a test until or unless the CMO comes up with a tighter definition of when to test children. Many children don't get a fever with colds, my DS never has, so it looks like everyone might have a different "normal". If it helps, you're doing the right thing!

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay - An asthma cough from going out into the cold or coming across an allergen is not a new and continuous cough, so it doesn't fit the definition of what needs testing. Apologies if you've already done this, but my DH found his asthma really improved by developing a new plan based on the Asthma UK website info, so he uses the brown inhaler much more effectively daily than he used to (including using a spacer) and now barely ever touches the blue. If you haven't looked before, it might be useful: www.asthma.org.uk/advice/.

I think there may have been a bit of a flurry of teachers getting tested before going back to work - there was an article in the Guardian by a teacher scaremongering where she casually mentioned that she'd got a test before her first day back. This article alone may have encouraged others to do likewise. DSD's friends all decided to go for a day out to the test centre on getting back from holiday just to see if maybe they'd all infected each other But that was weeks ago. I think it's naive and wrong of the government to suggest that all of a sudden people are getting tests when they shouldn't be and that that's the reason for the shortage - as the positivity rate very clearly suggests otherwise.

I've seen multiple threads of people talking about testing before and multiple years after holidays. It's unfortunate but there is a hard core of people who don't trust the current government and won't follow what's asked, even if they might follow rules set by anyone else. I don't mean Piers Corbyn type of idiots who don't understand how science works, it's people who listen to "Independent" Sage, Tony Blair and others giving an opinion - then follow that instead of the government advice. When the government advice is based on actual capacity versus risk, what happens then is short supply.

*times after holidays, not years...!

In some countries they offered all teachers and children tests before going back to school anyway. It could have seemed a responsible thing to do when tests were still very easy to come by.

Thanks MRex. I’m not worried about the obvious triggers. Those should be easy to identify. It’s more the general early Sept flare up or anything viral which will usually cause a lot of coughing.

It depends a lot on how much the hospital trust I work in are willing to take my word for it too.

This saliva test Matt H and BJ speak of where you get the results in less than half an hour and the plan could be to do it regularly. This would revolutionise the whole thing if people could regularly routinely test. Do we know how far along the development of it is and how soon it could be rolled out? I’m presuming this would be a way to go back to pretty normal before a vaccine.

@Augustbreeze - very small countries!!! I don't think any country has had 10.5 million spare test capacity kicking about in one week have they? Even India and the USA testing hasn't gone much above a million on any given day. UK simply couldn't process so many if capacity is 175,000 or so per day now. Quite apart from the fact that all students and teachers would really need 2 tests a week apart, plus double tests for positive cases or inconclusive... So let's make that 22 million tests needed in this one week, at current capacity taking 110 days to process. If you have different stats that indicate how this would be possible, please post them?

On a practical level, some would still be putting themselves at risk in the interim anyway, or abroad, or refusing tests, or false negatives... So there are still risks going back to school but nobody's now taking any precautions at all because "everyone" got tested. Plus nurseries, factories and offices demanding the same treatment.

Yes you're right @Augustbreeze that people probably thought they were being responsible and cautious by getting tests after holidays or before returning to work. Until very recently the chart the government published every day only showed one line for "testing capacity" which implied that we were only using about 50% of capacity which might well have made them think there was no shortage. It's now been made clearer that most of this "testing capacity" was in fact antibody tests which are bugger all use for anything it would appear (as noone seems confident enough to do anything with the results). Even recently the pillar 1/2 capacity has consistently been shown as higher than tests actually conducted, despite mounting evidence that the labs are maxed out. The government needs to be more honest with people about actual testing capacity if they want to discourage testing by low risk people.

2,659 cases just announced today.

And 8 deaths and 539 in hospital in England today.

@wintertravel1980

2,659 cases just announced today.

So even though cases are higher than recent weeks they are remaining at a level and not jumping up day on day (yet)

Is that a cause for optimism or too early to tell?

I think too early to make any judgements. Chris Whitty slide set, especially on age profiled at the press conference worth a closer look

CW said the increase are not as a result of increased testing

Yes boys, quite clear that the numbers and the % positive is going up in the 17-21 age group- A level results and the student crowd. I really feel for that age group, it's been crap all around for them

I'm quite excited to see Chris Whitty again. He is calm and collected and understands science. He always makes me feel reassured even if things are shit. I base my decisions more on what he says and always err on the side of more caution beyond the guidelines/law.

Damn early press briefing. Missed it so far

ooh that hexagon thing is very pretty data.

Whitty, as usual, very good.

Not sure I believe a word Boris is saying about enforcement.

I’m ok with it so far. Keep schools and businesses open by enforcing