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
📈 📉 📊 👍

@Piggywaspushed

Does anyone know what is so specific to Lowdon, Bleasby and Gunthorpe in the East Mids? Is that a factory outbreak?

I think the outbreak is in Lowdham Young Offenders Prison - staff and prisoners.

@Spaslet prison outbreaks where always going to be a high risk
people enclosed spaces 24/7 mixing with in the prison with others some (even in this case where they are younger) who may well have health conditions (drug addiction can damage many organs of the body) & probably have low vit d. Spread from the outside inwards & out wards again

Praying it was called something else when I did it, but it's GSCE level I think.

Or what I would call Standard Grades

I think we were lucky to escape the worst of prison outbreaks earlier this year. Whatton (close to Nottingham) has increasing figures as does Nottingham Prison.

@Witchend

Interesting thing I've just noticed: The number of deaths released on the day for the last three weeks has been the same on Tuesday and Wednesday. 22nd/23rd: 37 29th/30th: 71 6th/7th: 76

Very arresting... surely statistically unlikely?

Scotland have cancelled the equivalent of English/Welsh GCSEs, leaving more room (in every sense) for the exams which decide university places etc.

Ah , Lowdham, of course! Nightmare.

Thank you for this very informative thread. Been following since the beginning. It provides so much fantastic balanced analysis that is so hard to come by.
I agree the numbers are not as high today as I had feared. However, I left my son at Liverpool university halls 10 days ago. As expected his flat, amongst many others, have now been asked to isolate as 2 or 3 of them have symptoms. This has, of course, not come as a surprise.
What is concerning though, I that the campus testing hub could not provide them with tests until next week, so they were encouraged to go to a city testing site which they did this morning. They were told not to expect their results for a minimum of 7 days. How can we expect to get a full picture of numbers when the turnaround time is so long in areas of hotspots?
This is not a critism of the university. They have seemingly been great and supportive and have already delivered food to them

I have watched these threads from the start and used to find them really helpful. The fact base discussion and analysis of data stopped my anxiety spiralling out of control when media and forums were full of sensationalised versions of what was going on.
Maybe it's just me, but now I'm finding this thread to be full of speculation, anecdotal and opinion based debate (particularly around education) rather than the focusing on data and facts. I didn't think that's what this thread was meant to be about, and it's not helping me in the same way it once did.
That might not be the way anyone else is feeling, and perhaps I'm interpreting things incorrectly but I still thought I would post something in case anyone else agrees. I hope that hasn't offended anyone, I will go away and be quiet now.

It's just the exam element of the Nat 5s that have been cancelled. There is a higher proportion of coursework as part of the course than for highers, so it makes a lot of sense.

The new restrictions in scotland are less severe than I expected. I'm in the North, and won't notice much difference.

@Augustbreeze
Unlikely but not totally incredible.

I'm not a statistician, so my calculations may be off, but roughly, if you say that the Wednesday is within 10 people either side of Tuesday (which is has been since they changed the calculation of deaths), then it's roughly chance of at any one set of Tuesday and Wednesday 1/21 or approx 5% chance of that happening.
The chance of it happening 3 times in a row, I think would be (1/21)^3 =1/9261 so 0.0108%
So unlikely but not so suspicious you can make anything of it.

University of Surrey also setting up an on-site walk in centre for students, academics, and the immediate local area. Seems they are all upping their game, which is a good thing.

The helpful graphic by RP131 on Twitter is below showing cases by specimen date against the Whitty/Valance example scenario. Perhaps a slight indication that numbers might be starting to level off a bit but too early to tell really.

This is an interesting graph. I listened to a podcast with this guy this morning- quite a big scientific voice in Ireland.

Some people were speculating about cases at Bristol Uni - official numbers are here:

bristol uni covid cases

119 students as of today.

On the speculation about more young women testing, I studied some data for work a long time ago around sexual health. It was clear that women are conditioned to be more accepting of the need to go for a medical test, from things like smear tests and contraception checks. Even if directly invited young men wouldn’t attend, while young women would respond to even an indirect suggestion that they should. I suspect this has something to bear here too, they’ve had more contact with and are more familiar with the idea of getting tested for anything. Sorry I can’t link to source data, this was in the 2000s so may well be out of date now anyway!

Can’t help but observe parallels here:
We thought more young women were getting it, turns out just more tests among young women.
We thought Exeter had a problem vs Plymouth, turns out Exeter are testing more.
We thought hospital admissions were looking problematic and approaching spring levels again, turns out they are admitted for other reasons and just happen to be CV19 cases (ie showing up due to more testing)...

So is it just everywhere now? Or are we not at March stage yet? Feels impossible to draw any accurate points of comparison.

"The problem with that logic is that if the woman tested positive, the man would still have to self isolate so it would be an argument against women getting tested as well as men."

EducatingArti I suspect in such cases the man / main breadwinner simply would not self-isolate

@SheepandCow

Are we the only country struggling with test capacity?

... No country can test all it ideally wants

However, more sensible countries are using trained gatekeepers to assess first whether people need a test,
to prioritise those who really need tests, keep within system capacity and avoid long delays / mislaying data / general chaos

@Witchend

Interesting thing I've just noticed: The number of deaths released on the day for the last three weeks has been the same on Tuesday and Wednesday. 22nd/23rd: 37 29th/30th: 71 6th/7th: 76

... That would make me very suspicious, especially considering all the data errors so far

Manchester cases seems to be dropping. Suspiciously low. Perhaps the peak a few days ago was when all the students were being tested. Or perhaps there is a missing spreadsheet somewhere...

and I agree that statistically men are more likely to avoid health tests of all kinds than women and also not to comply with health advice

From today’s Liverpool covid report that @RedToothBrush often posts a helpful link to

For the week commencing 28th September 2020 there were 138 registered deaths in Liverpool, of which 14% (n=20) were Covid-19 deaths.

Small numbers so caution advised about extrapolation, but this seems a high percentage already to me. Any thoughts on what it is elsewhere?

Where can we find local numbers for hospitalisations for Covid?

ceevee i think that's just a delay in the results being processed.

I know my city is 0 for these dates, yet there will definitely be cases.

twitter.com/MichaelYeadon3/status/1313883285274136577/photo/1

I’m astonished that BBC Radio 4 has all day carried stories of NHS hospitals ‘almost going under’ with the number of covid19 patients.
The figure below is a feed not available to the public, valid Monday, directly from NHS England’s computer.
You either believe BBC or NHS data.

Grey bars are ‘confirmed covid19 patients’.
We’ve the same proportion of the most intensive care beds occupied by very ill patients who are positive in a covid19 PCR year as has Sweden.

@ceeveebee

Manchester cases seems to be dropping. Suspiciously low. Perhaps the peak a few days ago was when all the students were being tested. Or perhaps there is a missing spreadsheet somewhere...

Who is doing the testing?

Is the university doing some privately which aren't showing up on the official data?