Is this surge in cases down to foreign holidays?

[notevenat20]

The numbers are now going up alarmingly and if the exponential growth continues we will be up to our worst peak by Christmas,

So what caused it?

A lot of the increase in infections happened in very late August (since numbers went up by specimen date around 1st September, and you don't test positive for 5 or more days), so I'm not sure the increase in R is down to schools reopening.

But it could have caused by people returning from holiday?

What do people think?

Of course there are other big (and small) cities across the UK. I referred to Manchester and Birmingham in reply to your post about these two cities.

I might be wrong (and hope I am) but I remain sceptical about London's apparent current low rates of infection. I'd like to know how many tests are being done there, bearing in mind lots of people are having trouble accessing home tests and London has a high proportion of non drivers. We're also not being given infection rates for London as a whole but instead individual boroughs. Despite London being very interconnected and a small area geographical size wise.

It's not international travel alone causing the spread but it's hardly going to help is it. And yes some countries have very successfully tracked and traced travellers (Italy is one) but we're not doing so well.

The simple fact is airports are major hubs of mass movement. An absolute gift to a virus that wants to spread.

[quote HeresMe]@yawnsvillex

No. It's pubs and restaurants.

Seeing as been open since July 4th you are talking rubbish.

But Mumsnet hates pubs and restaurants for some reason.[/quote]
Agreed.

Where’s the evidence that EOTHO is a key driver? Many on here claiming it to be. Please link to a source.

Some clusters we know about: pub crawls in Aberdeen, teenage house parties in Scotland, teenagers travelling en masse to Zante, various factories, lots of household gatherings in Northern England, a handful of pubs.

I have not seen any references in the media to Covid being widely spread in bars and restaurants let alone specifically on Monday to Wednesday.

@SheepandCow- the simple fact is that there are not that many people flying anywhere at the moment. Mass movement my arse. You clearly haven’t visited an airport recently!

Could be another reason why there aren’t hugely high rates around the airports - lots of furloughed and unemployed people staying at home...

I might be wrong (and hope I am) but I remain sceptical about London's apparent current low rates of infection

There are a few theories kicking around:

Many more people infected earlier in the pandemic therefore more immunity in London

Less mixing of households, partly due to fewer people living close to other family members and also people not socialising with neighbours so much

More people working from home still due to fears about public transport, whereas outside of London more people drive to work. I think this is a key point. The trains are still empty during morning rush hour.

@BrieAndChilli

People though that the relaxing of the rules - being able to meet up with other households, go to the pub etc meant that you no longer had to social distance and could hug and share food etc.

Yes I think you are right. I've eaten out a few times but only with boyfriend because I can't work how to distance from someone outside my support bubble if we can't guarantee being given a large enough table. I seem to be in a minority in worrying about SD from dining companions though. I suspect even fewer people are SD from other households when in their own homes. I found it manageable when I (one person) visited a family of 4, but there was still a fair bit of "I'll just back into the lounge/kitchen to let you past", and "would you mind moving out of the hallway please so I can get to the toilet". I have no idea how a family of 5 and family of 4 meeting at home (as an example) would manage to keep far enough apart unless the house is massive.

Is London mirroring other cities that had high infection rates but are now doing ok? So New York, Stockholm?

You’ll have some herd immunity, not 60% but maybe around 20% plus we now know some people have natural immunity to this virus due to previous Coronavirus. Plus lots of single occupancy households and working from home..

I swear it's been fuelled by Eat Out to Help Out around here. We went on holiday abroad over the summer and came back and spent 14 days self isolating. We didn't have covid and followed the rules.

We came back to people queuing up to get £10 off their dinner. Fair enough but there were physical fights just up the road from me where people queue jumped. I'm in east London and it was well documented on the local news. Two weeks after it's ended our borough is seeing a massive spike 🤔

@yawnsvillex - are you a doctor? A virologist? Epidemiologist?

The number of cases going up is due to

• increase testing (yes even with the fact we cant have the tests we need, its much much hgher than in June for example). As we are testing more people with very mild symptoms, we are picking up more cases than we were only testing people in hopsital with very severe symptoms.

• The way the test works we are also picking up people who HAVE HAD the virus (maybe 2 monts agao) and are not infectious any more. That because we are looking for RNA (basically DNA traces) that can stay in the bodu for months after the infection rarher than checking for a live virus. That means we are basically getting a lot of false positive too....

I don’t think you can blame one group, there are several reasons.

If it was pubs and restaurants and seeing they have been opened since July, I would have expected a clear increase of cases much earlier as well as an increase of the number of deaths.
What we see is a small increase, not a spike.

we didnt have the testing kits in the beginning like we do now. The more people tested the higher the chances of finding a positive result. Also remember many do not have symptoms but are still able to pass on the virus.

@TheSeedsOfADream

The 2 who were at the wedding knowing they were positive are popular.

But of course no one would catch it because everyone kept 2m apart and wore masks right? 🙃

Manchester's Nightingale Hospital was still open when the shops reopened. It's last inpatient left at the end of June...

Does anyone want to work out why it was Manchester that went back into local lockdowns first?

Was it perhaps because it never went away in Manchester to begin with?

@Delatron

Is London mirroring other cities that had high infection rates but are now doing ok? So New York, Stockholm?

You’ll have some herd immunity, not 60% but maybe around 20% plus we now know some people have natural immunity to this virus due to previous Coronavirus. Plus lots of single occupancy households and working from home..

I'm sure I heard New York closed its state borders? It also has very tightly controlled international borders. Very little in the way of transport hub since they got so badly hit at the start.

Does anyone know how many tests are being done in London?

Also, why are London cases being reported as individual boroughs? It would be more helpful to report figures for the densely populated but small-sized interconnected city as a whole.

Perhaps London really does have a low number of cases (with none being missed as heart attacks or strokes or summer flu). If that's the case it might be that, having been so hard hit first time round, people there are being extra cautious. Possibly also a reasonable level of immunity. Evidence suggests it only lasts about six months. I guess we'll find out over the next few months.

Yes. It’s definitely down to Brits catching it from those dirty foreigners.

FWIW I've looked a bit at the data on the rates of footfall. There's only 14 places in the country which have recovered to pre-covid levels now.

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

Blackpool, Bournemouth, Birkenhead, Southend, Chatham, Burnley, Basildon, Doncaster, Portsmouth, Telford, Warrington, Wigan, Sunderland and Hull though there are a few others which are close to 100% footfall rates.

Yet if you look at the list of places where footfall has recovered least Leicester, Bristol, Sheffield, Cardiff, Nottingham, Leeds, Oxford, Birmingham, Manchester and London it doesn't seem to suggest there is much of a link with things reopening. At least not directly.

Especially when you look at both lists and the list of places under local measures and on the areas of concern watch list.

You would expect there to be a correlation between places with the most normal levels of footfall, and very large and sudden increases in covid rates. I'm not sure there is yet evidence for that

But I cavet that by also pointing out that the first list is exclusively provisional towns which have much older demographics than the cities. And the universities are yet to return. Which will affect what is happening and the patterns.

It will be interesting to compare increases in cases and increases/declines in footfall over the next couple of weeks....

@Grellbunt

Yes. It’s definitely down to Brits catching it from those dirty foreigners.

It's more likely us who were quite literally the 'dirty foreigners', spreading Covid across summer holiday destinations. Greece, for example, had lowish case rates until we arrived on holiday there.

It's simply down to large numbers of people (whatever nationality) gathering together in airports and (not cleaned regularly or thoroughly enough) planes.

Birkenhead is in Merseyside, which is now an official 'area of concern', I think? Sunderland is definitely seeing an increase in cases but I'm not sure if it's on any official list yet?

@SheepandCow

I forgot sarcasm doesn’t come across well on posts!

@PoopySalata

I swear it's been fuelled by Eat Out to Help Out around here. We went on holiday abroad over the summer and came back and spent 14 days self isolating. We didn't have covid and followed the rules.

We came back to people queuing up to get £10 off their dinner. Fair enough but there were physical fights just up the road from me where people queue jumped. I'm in east London and it was well documented on the local news. Two weeks after it's ended our borough is seeing a massive spike 🤔

If there was a spike 2 weeks after it ended that does not indicate a link at all. The increase would have come earlier.

@Grellbunt It's hard to get tone, etc when writing. I think I manage to sound less pompous and lecturing when I speak in person (I like to think so anyhow but perhaps my friends and family are just being nice!).

It's getting cooler - more people are spending time inside. Happens every year with various viruses which is why people get ill more in the autumn and winter months. Corona is no different.

@SheepandCow

Birkenhead is in Merseyside, which is now an official 'area of concern', I think? Sunderland is definitely seeing an increase in cases but I'm not sure if it's on any official list yet?

I think theres a few on the top footfall list which are seeing (BIG) surges - which aren't being talked about much (I am expecting it this week though. The press should be being nudged on a few on that list).

But that top footfall list is a mixed bag. I would expect patterns to be a bit different in the sea side towns, as people are probably travelling at distance for those, and that means any apparent problem might take longer to show because the increased footfall isn't coming from people who LIVE in the council area and I think thats a key point. Unlike in Birkenhead and Sunderland (and a couple of others)...

I think its hard to tell at this stage if its increased footfall and in particular bars and restuarants though. When we have been shifts of people moving back to cities to go to university we might get patterns which prove of interest on that score though.

Is it people returning from holiday? Nope. Absoluetely not. The figures are all much higher in the UK. You are more likely to be infected on the flight OUT rather than whilst in your destination or on your flight home in most cases.