Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 18

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 18 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Uk dashboard deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - 4 nations, English regions & LAs
Imperial UK weekly LAs, cases / 100k, table, map, hotspots
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
Zoe Uk data
UK govt pressers Slides & data
ICNRC Intensive Care National Audit & Research reports
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
Alama Personal COVID risk assessment

==> Our STUDIES Corner

Maybe, but can people take days off to get a test?

I would think it's more than outnumbered by the parents taking the traditional route of dosing kids up on calpol and sending them in (also so they can work).

It is impossible to get the economy back to "normal";
However, it's necessary to get back to as much as possible, without increasing risk / infections too much
Maybe aiming for 95% ? Depends on the sector

SD restricts the number of customers in all types of venues and reduces profits, or indeed makes a business run at a loss
Regardless of govt regs, some elderly / vulnerable /nervous customers will continue to stay away until a vaccine has been rolled out
The Grey Pound is important to parts of the leisure sector.

Some types of larger events of course have to be completely cancelled, so that is one sector that will be mostly closed for several months more, with knock-pon effects

I read that as knock-porn initially.

Lets get back to data - where can I find the high footfall list? I think it's pretty obvious that areas of high footfall are likely to be areas where people are less concerned about the virus. That may be because they are not compliant or are in areas of low incidence - or both. I've certainly seen, in a low incidence area, plenty of "its a hoax" posts. The "this is not flu" graph that BigChc posted long ago was in frequent use!

Given the much higher number of flu versus Covid deaths it may help ease Covid fears somewhat?

I don't see much evidence of a high number of flu deaths in the PHE weekly influenza reports?

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-national-flu-reports-2019-to-2020-season

This is troubling. Its concerning delayed test results.

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/breaking-bolton-coronavirus-rate-200-18941336
Bolton coronavirus infection rate soars to above 200 - the first area in UK to cross grim landmark
More than 50 delayed positive tests were reported

The infection rate is usually reported three days behind to allow enough time for results to be collated - so the rate for the week ending on September 10 was reported on Sunday, September 13.

Figures released by Public Health England that day showed there had been 552 cases reported for Bolton in that week, which gave an infection rate of 192.0.

However, a further 55 positive tests have now been added to the total for week ending September 10 - which lifts the infection rate to 211.1.

The infection rate has also been revised upwards to 201.7 for the previous day and up to 201.4 for the following day (week ending September 11).

It is thought the delayed reporting of the test results will have been linked to the chaos in the testing system which has left many people unable to find a test centre.

@alreadytaken

I read that as knock-porn initially.

Lets get back to data - where can I find the high footfall list? I think it's pretty obvious that areas of high footfall are likely to be areas where people are less concerned about the virus. That may be because they are not compliant or are in areas of low incidence - or both. I've certainly seen, in a low incidence area, plenty of "its a hoax" posts. The "this is not flu" graph that BigChc posted long ago was in frequent use!

www.centreforcities.org/data/high-streets-recovery-tracker/

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/bolton-sees-rise-covid-hospital-18937074.amp?__twitter_impression=true

News about increased hospital admissions in Bolton

Someone asking about footfall - the Google footfall maps are here: www.google.com/covid19/mobility/, just go to a country and open the PDF. Each PDF also summarises regions where those are available (e.g. UK).

@BigChocFrenzy - do you think it is useful to enough people to put on the next OP list?

They can be useful e.g. Greater London public transport use is down 41% and work down 50%. People can easily show some crowded streets, but they are nowhere near as crowded as usual. With those footfall stats it's not even a serious question to ask why spread hasn't started much yet/ again in London.

Question from me - any ideas why Brighton has suddenly sprung a raft of cases? 21 today moving to 64 for the week and I can't see any reason why except general increased footfall as people have described above for some other areas. If it's simple footfall leading to increases, this is a big thing to check... but of course there may be other explanations for each area.

Just realised that some schools data have been added to the ScotGov stats, I hadn't scrolled far enough through the tabs to notice it before.

It definitely reflects our experience that, about 10 days in, everybody got the cold and there was quite a panic and cold feet about the kids being back in school. After that week it all settled down. I think we're seeing the same process playing out in England now.

@MRex

Someone asking about footfall - the Google footfall maps are here: www.google.com/covid19/mobility/, just go to a country and open the PDF. Each PDF also summarises regions where those are available (e.g. UK).

@BigChocFrenzy - do you think it is useful to enough people to put on the next OP list?

.... It's decent quality data, so I can add it to the OP if people would like to see this

• sing out if you would, anyone

We had a lot of coughs & sniffles etc the first week or two, as each German state opened schools
e.g. Berlin closed 5% of schools pretty quickly

However, this seems to have calmed down now and reports are of very few closures atm
Testing, track & trace did their usual efficient job, probably

Covid treatment in development

This is just cell culture experiments, so human trials are necessary
However, a promising line of research into treatment

https://www.deutschland.de/en/news/coronavirus-in-germany-informations

Biochemists and virologists from the Goethe University and University Hospital Frankfurt have for the first time created an overall picture of the communication of a cell infected by SARS-CoV-2 viruses.

In cell culture experiments, the scientists succeeded in stopping virus replication with a series of clinically tested cancer drugs.

⏭ Further tests with humans are needed.

But the advantage is that approved drugs have a huge developmental advantage,
so that clinical trials could be started very quickly on the basis of the results and fewer further experiments

Some interesting numbers in the ongoing story about Bolton about the scale in the uptick in demand for testing.

Yesterday the MEN reported on people turning up at A&E there. Now the BBC have now run a story on people trying to get a covid test cos they can't get them elsewhere.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-54176883

More than 100 people turned up at an A&E asking for Covid-19 tests, sparking a plea from a hospital trust for anyone who is not seriously ill to stay away.
Bolton NHS Trust said dozens of people went to Royal Bolton Hospital because they could not get into test centres.

and

Lancashire's director of public health said the system was at "breaking point" and was "compromising our ability to stop the transmission".

Dr Sakthi Karunanithi said it was "beyond frustrating", adding: "The issue is lab capacity.
"We have our own community testing sites and were doing about 200 tests a day - [on Tuesday] we did 1,639 tests. We can't go on like this."

Bolton Council said a test centre had been due to open on Saturday at the Last Drop Village Hotel in response to the growing number of cases but was delayed when "an external business" failed to turn up.

A spokesman said although the delay had been "out of our hands", the authority was "working with the government and their partners to find out what has happened".

Chris Giles@ChrisGiles_
Forget the 89% "in person" tests received the next day stuff from the prime minister

That relates to week ending September 2 (and its 44% for all tests).

Since then its plummeted to only 8% getting a positve test result the day after the test

www.ft.com/content/ab006ca3-bd4f-49ef-a248-276381276d76
Sharp slowdown in release of Covid tests in England hits efforts to stop virus
Proportion of people getting positive results by end of the day after being tested plummets from 63% to 8%

On Tuesday, half of those receiving a positive result in England had taken the test at least three days earlier. For a quarter of the cases, the results took four days or more to come.

and

The NHS admitted last week that turnround times for the majority of tests, which are taken at satellite testing centres or via home-delivered kits, were “getting longer” and took on average 80 hours to deliver a result — double the time in early July.

and

This is now showing up in the daily data released by the government on caseloads, which are increasingly being reported as positive samples taken from many days before being reported.

(See my post upthread about cases being added to Bolton's numbers retrospectively).

That would be excellent news @BigChocFrenzy, I hope that works.

Has anyone seen any more news on limiting who gets tests until the capacity increases? Surely this is urgent!

Turning up at A&E for a test sounds like hysterical behaviour though. A&E has always been for people being very unwell. If someone isn't in need of medical assistance beyond a test, WTF are they thinking that a test will do?

This is a measured, intelligent and really quite reassuring overview of the infection/death trends in the UK, France and Spain

The problem with cancer drugs is that they have a different safety standard for other drugs. You look at the balance between potential benefit and risk. So if it's lung cancer, say, which is often fatal, you'll tolerate bad side effects because they are better than death.
Covid is not that fatal. So you might run your clinical trial on people in ICU but it might not be ethical to do so on a 20 year old.

Turning up at A&E for a test sounds like hysterical behaviour though. A&E has always been for people being very unwell. If someone isn't in need of medical assistance beyond a test, WTF are they thinking that a test will do?

Allow them to return to work / school so they can pay the bills and feed the family?

Can we please stop associating the NHS will track and trace. It is not an NHS system. It is run by Boris's mate Dido Harding who was responsible for the failures at talk talk.

I would not be turning up at A&E for a test! in my local hospital, someone was admitted after a bad fall, caught Covid in the hospital and died there, I will be staying and dying at home, you wouldnt catch me anywhere near a hospital again! I actually used to work there too, left just before Christmas, thank God.

We don't need drugs for mildly ill, but doctors now have a toolkit to indicate who is likely to suffer severe symptoms,
at which stage some significant side effects become acceptable

I gather that the 2 steroids only work for some of those at the stage of receiving receiving oxygen, not for mildly ill

In the very early days of COVID, there was insufficient infection control at hospitals
and iirc 10-20% of infections in some areas were hospital acquired

However, with testing as part of the admission process, that has greatly improved now and the NHS has a good system

@BigChocFrenzy

We don't need drugs for mildly ill, but doctors now have a toolkit to indicate who is likely to suffer severe symptoms, at which stage some significant side effects become acceptable

I gather that the 2 steroids only work for some of those at the stage of receiving receiving oxygen, not for mildly ill

I saw India is running out of oxygen supplies, I hope someone has oxygen in big letters on the NHS shopping list.