Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 23

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 23 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Uk dashboard deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - 4 nations, English regions & LAs
UK govt pressers Slides & data
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
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
Zoe Uk data
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
📈 📉 📊 👍

@regarding “blaming” notherners there is also the school of thought that lockdown was too quick to be lifted here as the baseline of cases was not as low as it was in the south. So we are building from a higher base now. I’m not entirely sure that’s true, and personally am pleased we did have a short break from restrictions in the summer, but it’s what Andy Burnham insists.

Certainly, with the exception of Leicester, restrictions were lifted at the same time across England which arguably wasn’t the best approach

@Hmmph I am in that situation, fresher DS comes back home from halls for swabbing each time.

Is it not possible that part of the reason why young children have a lower rate of contracting the virus is simply that they have a lower number of contacts than other groups? Their bubbles are 30 versus 300 in secondary children and they have no social life independent of their parents.

I think it is quite possible that they are less likely to transmit but I think it is important not to overextend conclusions from very limited data when there are numerous variables that could be responsible, not just age.

I just did a back of the envelope calc of the 7 day rate per 100,000 for the week ending 4 June when the main lockdown lifting happened:
20 in the Northwest
4 in London

@Frazzled2207

I acknowledge that cases may have been higher in the North when lockdown was lifted but I don't understand why?

Arguably the North was earlier on its epidemic curve when lockdown happened so in effect locked down earlier (which is generally considered to be a good thing).

On paper I would have thought that numbers should have dropped more quickly in the North than they did in the South?

@InMySpareTime I admire his dedication!

And continuing my alternate theory of why older teenagers are seeing more growth, it could be absolutely nothing to do with puberty occurring at 13-14 and everything to do with them taking their elective options at that time, and their bubbles expanding from single classes to whole year clusters.

Wrt to parents swabbing themselves twice for the ons (instead of swabbing their children as suggested up thread), it would have to be damn statistically unlucky to only be happening in cases where the child was positive but the adult was negative

Im in the north east and the vast vast majority of people I see are behaving sensibly the main issue I think is university students. Newcastle is a relatively small city to have 2 big unis. On the map almost all the dark blue areas are students!

Not much coverage of Northern Ireland, their rate per 100k is 70% higher than England and higher than every region of England apart from the North West and North East. Also significantly higher than Scotland and Wales and nearly 4 times higher than the Republic of Ireland.

mobile.twitter.com/avds/status/1314616278775144448

@Timeforanotherusername

Ilove I think it is logical to suggest that if there were lots of asymptomatic young children being super spreaders, then the rate of increase in the 25-34 and 35-49 age ranges would be a lot higher compared to Age 2 to School Year 6.

Its not there.

Yes, I am making an assumption, but in my opinion the data is there to suggest its a reasonable assumption.

You seem determined that children are asymptomatic and super spreaders. Please provide the evidence!

Do bear in mind that many under-5s are not being sent in as they are below Compulsory School Age and their parents are not obliged to if they don't want to. Also, if they are with childminders or in nursery, their bubbles are likely to be smaller in size.

I think there is pretty clear evidence that many children who are positive are asymptomatic, and that children play a key role in transmission to household members see both the large Princeton-led contact tracing study in India (www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/30/largest-covid-19-contact-tracing-study-date-finds-children-key-spread-evidence) and this CDC piece (www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6937e3.htm). There's also an interesting thread by Cambridge mathematician Dr Sarah Rasmussen pointing out that there were big flaws in an influential systemic review about children's infectivity and transmission re school closures which pointed to reduced risk on both fronts -- and there are undoubtedly some problematic aspects to it. You can find that here: twitter.com/SarahDRasmussen/status/1309437229622865920

No PHE watch list update today?

[quote CoffeeandCroissant]Not much coverage of Northern Ireland, their rate per 100k is 70% higher than England and higher than every region of England apart from the North West and North East. Also significantly higher than Scotland and Wales and nearly 4 times higher than the Republic of Ireland.

mobile.twitter.com/avds/status/1314616278775144448[/quote]
Wasnt there something like only 16 icu beds left in NI yesterday!?

I am not sure about the less social contact re children thing, yes true between secondary and primary but my own children have a lot more social contacts than I do on account of them being at school and me and dh working from home and as I said in relation to primary school children contact is not even expected to be socially distanced and there is no mask wearing requirements in England. Obviously as we are in the wfh category we are particularly limited in social contact but even those working outside the home are supposed to be socially distancing and many wearing masks and yet adults seem to have the same or higher infection rates than primary school children unless they are over 70.

I increasingly feel that primary school children really shouldn’t be the focus re pandemic control with are efforts better being put on what can bring down the very high infection rates in 16-24 year old. The phe data, the ons data and the imperial data all say this is the age group where we currently have a problem and the solutions are undoubtedly difficult and complex ...and a lot more that just “blaming the young”, but shutting primary school will not bring down the infection rate in the group most likely to currently be infected!

Sorry 16 was yesterday's figure. Todays is 15.

NI has a total of 104 ICU beds.
16 are occupied with covid patients (10 on ventilators)
73 others are occupied.

That leaves 15 empty.

@Sunshinegirl82
We didn’t have nearly as good stats then (hence I don’t know if it’s true) but I thought it was accepted that London got it worse than the north in the spring. Although it was far more balanced generally than it is now.

@RedToothBrush

No PHE watch list update today?

I think the whole country is now the watch list sadly

@Qasd

I am not sure about the less social contact re children thing, yes true between secondary and primary but my own children have a lot more social contacts than I do on account of them being at school and me and dh working from home and as I said in relation to primary school children contact is not even expected to be socially distanced and there is no mask wearing requirements in England. Obviously as we are in the wfh category we are particularly limited in social contact but even those working outside the home are supposed to be socially distancing and many wearing masks and yet adults seem to have the same or higher infection rates than primary school children unless they are over 70.

I increasingly feel that primary school children really shouldn’t be the focus re pandemic control with are efforts better being put on what can bring down the very high infection rates in 16-24 year old. The phe data, the ons data and the imperial data all say this is the age group where we currently have a problem and the solutions are undoubtedly difficult and complex ...and a lot more that just “blaming the young”, but shutting primary school will not bring down the infection rate in the group most likely to currently be infected!

My own personal theory kind of agrees with yours given the figures it obviously needs a serious shift to remote learning for college and university students! Or some other intervention. I'm a little surprised that they aren't presenting the numbers differently to reflect the actual educational grouping though 16-18 is, imho, rather different from the 18-21 university age students.

And I absolutely agree it's important to keep the schools open, because there are huge benefits for children -- but we should be allowing parents to make a decision about whether it's right for their circumstances to send their children in. There are children who have vulnerabilities that mean they were previously shielding. There are parents and other household members who are at risk for one reason or another. And some households are "socially vulnerable", like single parent households or multigenerational households with older family members living there too. Currently they are ALL being forced to send their children to school, regardless of local case rates or personal circumstances, with threats of fines or prosecution or being pushed off the school roll completely. We should remove those threats and let parents make the decision that's best for their family. If the people who were able to home educate temporarily were allowed to, the smaller bubble sizes would also reduce risk and make it safer for the staff members and students who really do need to be in school.

And obviously we need quicker and more accessible testing, and a working track and trace system. It's so frustrating. We could be so much more 'open for business' if we had these things working properly.

I think the whole country is now the watch list sadly

Well we would get the positivity rates for everywhere....

😱

Mother schools were closed during that study I believe.

And it specifically mentions household spread.

Living conditions in India are very different to the UK.

I don't really see how we can compare that study to children going to school in the UK.

At this time, the evidence from the UK suggests that younger children are not catching and spreading it anymore than adults (excl young adults) even though they are more likely to spend all day in a non Covid secure environment with no social distancing and masks.

We can't ignore the fact.

That doesn't mean i don't think parents should have a choice re schooling.

But there have been some on this thread and others calling for primary age children wearing masks, part time schools and blended learning.

And the evidence doesn't support it.

@Frazzled2207

I agree, I think it is generally accepted there were higher levels of infection in London (and possibly the south) than there were in the North when we went in to lockdown.

Shouldn't that have nipped cases in the North in the bud early and kept levels low? The North effectively locked down earlier (and earlier lockdowns are generally considered to be a good thing). What I don't understand is the argument for saying that lockdown ended too soon for the North. On paper the North should have been able to come out of lockdown earlier than the south.

Either we went in to lockdown too late (and thus had to have a longer lockdown) which seems likely or we went too early (if too early is a thing?!) We can't have done both to my mind.

@Timeforanotherusername

Mother schools were closed during that study I believe.

And it specifically mentions household spread.

Living conditions in India are very different to the UK.

I don't really see how we can compare that study to children going to school in the UK.

At this time, the evidence from the UK suggests that younger children are not catching and spreading it anymore than adults (excl young adults) even though they are more likely to spend all day in a non Covid secure environment with no social distancing and masks.

We can't ignore the fact.

Yes, more research needed on schools I'm sure. It's very experimental at this point! The Princeton study is meaningful howeer because it is so large. The salient points are that:

• Children and young adults can in fact contract coronavirus from people their own age.
• The researchers found that children and young adults made up one-third of COVID cases.
• The researchers found evidence that children and young adults were especially key to transmitting the virus in the studied populations.

It's not about school return, but I'd suggest those findings are both pretty robust and relevant TO school return.

Yes, the population will be different, and living conditions and household make-up. But still, I think these findings do confirm the scale of transmission between children, and from children to adults in their households. As does the CDC study I linked to also, which obviously looks at a small-scale outbreak in more detail -- that one is specific to a childcare setting and interesting because it's specifically about younger children.