Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 22

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 22 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Uk dashboard deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - 4 nations, English regions & LAs
R estimates UK & English regions
Imperial UK weekly LAs, cases / 100k, table, map, hotspots
School statistics Attendance
Modelling real number of UK infections February to date
NHS England Hospital activity
NHs England Daily deaths
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
PHE Surveillance reports & LA Local Watchlist Maps by LSOA
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 GB test positivity etc, DIY country graphs
FT DIY graphs compare deaths, cases, raw / million pop
Alama Personal COVID risk assessment
Local Mobility Reports for countries
UK Highstreet Tracker for cities & large towns Footfall, spend index, workers, visitors, economic recovery

⏭ Our STUDIES Corner ⏮

We welcome factual, data driven and analytical contributions
Please try to keep discussion focused on these
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Looking at my local schools, reported by SCC and Surrey Live, those that have had to send bubbles home, have had only one positive case. So, locally at least, these cases are coming in from the community, and at this time don't seem to be transmitting within the school environment.

One of many problems in an epidemic is that of hospital-acquired infections,
which is especially difficult to avoid with Covid,
when infected people can spread the virus before having symptoms themselves, or indeed being asymptomatic

This results in some patients becoming ill or dying because they went for urgent treatment and Covid worsened their condition,
as well as other people becoming more ill / dying from something else because they didn't go to hospital, to avoid the risk of Covid there

Scotland update Seems that all pubs and restaurants need to close between the hours of 6pm and 6am, and in the southern belt of Scotland all pubs and restaurants will close for 2 weeks from friday.

More females were tested than males except for age 0-9, where parental choice obviously decides

• do small boys exhibit more symptoms ? - and age 70-79, where numbers are equal, but there are probably slightly more women than men still alive

@MRex

Sorry, I missed the real gem "The biggest differences are seen for age groups 20 to 29 and 30 to 39 where around 40% more people who identify as female were tested than people who identify as male."

This also mathematically suggests anther interesting girls under 20 and women over 40 are LESS likely to be tested than boys/ men of the same age. Any theories?

No I don't ncessarily think it implies this. It could mean that equal numbers of males and females were tested outside these ages. I think it would be interesting to know why mopre women of ages 20-40 were tested though. Assuming in the main they were tested because they had symptoms, it could be all sorts: Child care responsibilities - more likely to pick up Covid and other bugs with similar symptoms? More conscientious about getting tested than men of the same age? More likely to work in jobs that they cannot do from home? (although I'm not sure why this would be different to older women)

I agree with you on the “with vs of” discussion BCF

We’ll never know for certain but if you look at the shape and timings of the graphs they strongly suggest that almost all of the Covid registered deaths were indeed caused by Covid, and that an awful lot of the “non-Covid” excess dementia deaths were Covid related. No other hypothesis explains the data as well.

More conscientious about getting tested than men of the same age

Lots and lots of studies into men and medical interventions show this to be the case, regardless of current pandemic, so I think that is quite likely.

I wonder what would happen if they did asymptomatic testing in those schools though baaahhh?

Thanks for the link, MRex. I have just noticed that the document refers to “newly tested” individuals (similarly to the Scottish dashboard).

I thought the “newly tested” concept was unique to Scotland but if it is used for whole of the UK, it is clearly an issue (PHE deaths saga number two). The positivity number will become less and less meaningful as we test more people and eventually run out of “newly tested” individuals.

Chart above is Pillar 1+2, so includes testing of NHS staff and care homes - presumably any aged 70+ in Pillar 1 were residents in care homes

I'd expect many more females than men to be tested in Pillar 1 considering the staff ratio
It may be that female staff were not tested as often as male - due to the greater risk to men ?

Ok thanks for ‘with v of’ information.

Data shows numbers dying in hospital from something else are not inflating the figures.

People are still dying from other things but not many were COVID positive.

@BigChocFrenzy

One of many problems in an epidemic is that of hospital-acquired infections, which is especially difficult to avoid with Covid, when infected people can spread the virus before having symptoms themselves, or indeed being asymptomatic

This results in some patients becoming ill or dying because they went for urgent treatment and Covid worsened their condition,
as well as other people becoming more ill / dying from something else because they didn't go to hospital, to avoid the risk of Covid there

I think this is all the more reason for hospital/care home staff to be tested weekly for Covid, which isn't actually happening everywhere, even though the government said it was a priority

Dementia is a known risk factor for severe Covid, therefore I have never believed the "isolation" line.

Hospitals have been told there are limits on what they can spend on testing. There are sometimes delays in getting test results, I have no idea how common that is in Manchester. There is also the false negative problem. It really isnt possible to say from the Manchester figures if these are people who acquired the infection in hospital or were admitted for ?Covid or ?pneumonia that turned out to be Covid when they finally got a test result. The hospitals infection control staff will be investigating such cases if they seem likely to be hospital acquired infections.

Southampton have been doing a saliva study for some time and that certainly looks at the children of health care staff. I've not seen any results from it.

@EducatingArti - not really, until we get to older men (more unwell), women are consistently more likely to be tested. See the graph @BigChocFrenzy posted. So, the data says women are much more likely to get tested, but slightly less likely to get a positive test result. Are women more responsible? More getting tested because they take the kids? Or, is it that men are less likely to see a doctor until it gets serious? (60% of men avoid doctor: www.healthline.com/health-news/why-so-many-men-avoid-doctors#:~:text=A%20new%20survey%20highlights%20the,withhold%20information%20from%20their%20doctors.)

Piggywaspushed I agree, I think the data undoubtedly demonstrates that (young) women seek out tests for minor symptoms whereas men ingnore them.

@Piggywaspushed

I wonder what would happen if they did asymptomatic testing in those schools though baaahhh?

... Despite the strain on testing capacity, there should be sufficient capacity to test1 school occasionally - but parental permission would be the snag, to make it a complete study

We can look at a few private schools that tested everyone before reopening, but community numbers were lower then, so not surprising that they found very few positives
I don't know if any private schools have repeated their mass testing ?
That would be useful to see, a few weeks on

The new Scotland restrictions

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54449573?atcustom2=facebookkpage&atcustom4=84AD3758-08A8-11EB-A095-F93B3A982C1E&attmedium=custom7&atcampaign=64&attcustom3=BBC+News&atcustom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&fbclid=IwAR3vxWbZLLbUfNV41I23C8HyoJq8Jhr34EgBOrhR1kJvsOGhmdLzO774cio&fbclid=IwAR0gVio0JwijsPbN8i9jc3-E1zhBQepIEXEoc-DI8ygm5RRXioHPjGAkS8&fbclid=IwAR3cQd66c0oyNX5e7fyCpGiEQ6lPD4bwCjV6OM5hedXQvyAluAzvqpfQrJA&fbclid=IwAR2rmy2GDKeW6qrgkfIPTZylIMNZ8lu1nw8jfFT1lvXvkOZk9EF-Y0DGlB8&fbclid=IwAR0TWQV2hjbzv6OEo-7jXynvGRkQyiAqOZcsPXd1k9sUfxHHapVmSME3jg&fbclid=IwAR2GU4UCNiHRIGDlPXM0k57bf0KFfMZJFnaE4C7kgw2zbeYVEx3n6D0L8gI&fbclid=IwAR22aZbyy-q7OggZysBZYdjYsDq1qivREvIre8lHfYg1anRMx2OBzsIOHhg

I do know PHE are still doing their study and Imperial is ,too. 6 months til results, however. Also the Bristol study.

[quote MRex]**@EducatingArti* - not really, until we get to older men (more unwell), women are consistently more likely to be tested. See the graph @BigChocFrenzy* posted. So, the data says women are much more likely to get tested, but slightly less likely to get a positive test result. Are women more responsible? More getting tested because they take the kids? Or, is it that men are less likely to see a doctor until it gets serious? (60% of men avoid doctor: www.healthline.com/health-news/why-so-many-men-avoid-doctors#:~:text=A%20new%20survey%20highlights%20the,withhold%20information%20from%20their%20doctors.)[/quote]
...
In pillar 1, women would dominate as being the majority of care staff and HCPs

I can't find it now already but there were some results that showed there was a higher incidence of covid in children of healthcare staff. This was sued to suggest transmission went from adult to child, although someone (Ferguson I think ) took exception to that at the time. It was definitely the case that many of the children had no to very mild symptoms, and I think that is where the info about stomach upsets came from.

used

In Pillar 2, with the man in 90% of cases being the higher earner, many families might decide not to risk losing that income during isolation if positive,
but could cope with an SAHM or much lower earning pt woman isolating.

@wintertravel1980 - I saw that too, but thankfully the methodology just deletes their first negative test (actually WTF they do that I'm not sure, but it does at least include their positive test): www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-test-and-trace-statistics-england-methodology/nhs-test-and-trace-statistics-england-methodology

"Figures for people tested, and people testing positive have been de-duplicated so people who have multiple tests in both pillars 1 and 2 would only appear once. An individual is counted in ‘people tested’ in the week where they first tested positive (for those with at least one positive test) or the week where they were first tested (for those without a positive test result). If a person is tested under both pillar 1 and pillar 2, then only the test under the pillar where they first tested positive or where they were first tested (for those without a positive test) is counted. This means that individuals newly testing positive who have previously only tested negative, will change which week they are counted in for ‘people tested’. They may also change which pillar they are counted under. Previous figures are revised to account for these changes.

For example, someone testing negative for the first time in week 1 will be counted in the ‘people tested’ figure for that week. If that same person tests positive for the first time in week 4, they will be counted in the ‘people testing positive’ figure and ‘people tested’ figure for week 4 but removed from the ‘people tested’ figure for week 1. People testing positive refers only to people who have newly tested positive for COVID-19 and does not include people who have had more than one positive test."

piggy the Southampton study is potentially capable of providing some useful information about schools, frustrating not to have heard anything from it.

well as you note there aren’t nearly enough teachers. So this isn’t a solution that would be able to help with the pandemic.

When my daughter's class was halved for SD school in June/July they employed new TAs, not teachers. Despite the fact my DD was in with a TA leading not a teacher, her education improved immeasurably because of the individual attention and space and peace in the classroom. She loved it. An experienced teacher set the work (same as for the other class of course) and the TA delivered it.

No-one was off sick, so learning proceeded smoothly, with everyone at the same level (not so now with so many isolating for their own or siblings illnesses).

Having had that experience I'd take a half size class with a TA (being guided by a teacher) rather than full size with a teacher.

Normally they have teacher plus TA in each class so the experienced TAs were in charge of the half sized class with new TAs supporting both teacher and experienced TA.