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
📈 📉 📊 👍

@Piggywaspushed

Thanks BigChoc. It's still not quite the 'humanising face', I am after but interesting nonetheless.

... I was answering part 2 of your questions

re part 1 and empathy:
there was the occasional photo array in the 1st wave when deaths of HCPs reached e.g. 100
but not since and not for deaths of ordinary members of the public

It would be rather blatantly manipulative for government to publish photos and they'd have to ask the bereaved for photos & permission etc

The photo array came from newspapers only, I should have posted !

In England, the SE, SW and East are still low, < 20 cases / 100,000 and some < 5 / 100,000
Some other low areas too

Regarding chickenpox, the vaccine is considered protective in later life for children. It hasn't been included in UK standard vaccination yet because of the long tail of older adults having an increased risk of shingles if chickenpox rates decline. We vaccinated DS because it is better for him.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150811103555.htm

I don't know why we can't just vaccinate the older adults against shingles as well, not just over-75s but 20-40yo if that's the risk category. Job done, no?

"Very useful would be the breakdown by age of those currently with Covid in hospital - so includes those who catch it there" -- I quite agree with you @BigChocFrenzy.

As a single mother in my 30s I am less concerned with the death rate but significantly concerned about the hospitalisation rate for women in my age group -- which I have understood from news reports has been rising. I would like some visibility of this!

I don't know why we can't just vaccinate the older adults against shingles as well

I thought the reason was lack of evidence for the vaccine efficacy in over 80 year olds? so maybe in a few years when those will have protection from the 70-79 year vaccinations they're getting at the moment? we're pretty off topic now though.

correct me if I'm wrong (really)
In a pandemic wouldn't it be valuable information to know who was tested/who was positive or negative/has had it on a granular level?

For school kids/young adults specifically....
When booking for a test they do ask for data that allows gov to specifically distinguish between ppl. Gov also know who is on which school's raster.
So theoretically they could easily check by the postcode given if the person is testing at home/in edu setting.
And they could easily do overlays on maps of "ppl live here, but test is over there" and the likes. Or ppl tested here, but go to school here
Or is this too granular data?

I'd think that this would help TTR. If a kid from school A yr3 tests positive PHE would automatically look up attendance (again available to gov) and if kid was in school then automatically trigger the deep clean and isolation protocol.

Obv we would need PHE/NHS to run TTR and not some private cronies. And a gov we could trust.

I think in europe we are way too precious with data to the point of being stupid. Eg I've read somewhere that unis wouldn't like to give out their student's list of who lives in the halls. (don't actually know if it's true and can't check if gov has that info, so if anyone knows chime in pls.)
But if you asked Amazon they would easily compile that list per hall and are happy to sell it to you for good money. It won't be 100% but close enough. Or most social sites and google/apple actually know your location most of the time.

Google even has a mobility report updated weekly
www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

I think if TTR was incorporating social media data (anything from google to tinder) it could make life easier.

Yes, agreed . I meant that the media has a responsibility for humanising and they aren't doing it. Not even The Guardian.

I was also wondering whether there would be another study of occupational risk.

If students are entering their home post codes, which I think is understandable particularly for freshers who may still feel "away from home", they're inadvertently using the same 'loophole' as was allegedly used when tests were hardest to obtain.

That is, you can enter any post code to book the test, get your QR code, then take it to any testing centre. Aberdeen was said to be a good bet.

But this wouldn't apply for those not having to use the centralised test booking website.

@BigChocFrenzy Thanks! I am trying to keep up, but as you said it’s fast moving!

Channel 4 news had this report last night (families of frontline workers who died)

@Piggywaspushed

Yes, agreed . I meant that the media has a responsibility for humanising and they aren't doing it. Not even The Guardian.

I was also wondering whether there would be another study of occupational risk.

... They have a responsibility to produce accurate facts and responsible analysis - above all to correct fake news anywhere, to criticise the government for incompetence and cronyism to show who does well

It can be dangerous and irresponsible when the media intentionally manipulate emotions of their audience

• and they could just as easily choose to focus on suicides of the unemployed, or pictures of people going to foodbanks, being evicted

I don't want news media trying to tug at the heartstrings; I want news & facts, not soap opera

When HCPs, care workers, essential staff etc die from lack of PPE or SD, then it makes sense to show some of these victims
and interview families & unions wanting answers

I don't want news media trying to tug at the heartstrings; I want news & facts, not soap opera

This.

Couldn’t agree more re emotional manipulation in the media.

The few stories from The Guardian linked here have turned me off it - and stories like them

I pretty much stick with this thread and R4

OK, so I disagree : deaths are facts. Reduce them to a statistic with 'underlying health condition' continuously appended and you get a very dangerous empathy fatigue.

I wasn't talking about manipulation. Humanising death is not manipulation. It is what we do when studying horrors of the past, for example.

If students are entering their home post codes, which I think is understandable particularly for freshers who may still feel "away from home"
There's also the aspect that they're in a new place with a new postcode, which they may not know offhand, possibly feeling quite ill... it's easier for them to give their home one, may not even think about their uni one. Doesn't have to be a deliberate thought even, simply automatic-a bit like when I signed my maiden name, and I'd been married 6 months at that point.

Yes, agreed . I meant that the media has a responsibility for humanising and they aren't doing it. Not even The Guardian.
I felt (and other may have felt differently) that even at the peak, there was far more emphasis on the "106yo who has COPD and asthma and various other health issues, who recovered" over deaths without underlying causes.
Yes, there was a need for positivity, but I've certainly heard people saying "well I read about that 106yo so if I get it it's no big deal."
A quote (probably misquote as I can't find the book) in reference to the media "A child dies in a garden pond: that's tragedy. A tsumani wipes out half a million people in China: that's news."

I don't want news media trying to tug at the heartstrings; I want news & facts, not soap opera
Yes, please!

As a Richmond resident with a son who tested positive in his uni town this week, I'm intrigued by the claims of our council leader linked above.

Does anyone know the process for reporting a notifiable disease such as Covid? Given the scant info needed to book a test, and the fact that postcode is a driver of where tests are offered (so students very unlikely to put home postcode imho) is it possible that the name + dob + NHS number if given is linked to GP registration and "notified" and therefore reported in stats based on GP registration? It is very hard to see how this could be happening otherwise.

I'm not a huge fan of Richmond council but I can't imagine them making this phenomenon up to make their stats look better.

@EducatingArti
I wonder exactly this, I'm in the area and am wondering about the justification for extra measures where cases have got out of control WITH measures. Obviously something has to be done though, and it's quite possible that WITH measures things would have been even worse.

Im not sure why anyone is surprised by Richmond. We KNOW that infections have been led by 18 - 24 year olds in the most affluent group.

This isn't restricted by location in the country.

This points to a behavioural issue related to money.

In this age group, the most affluent group is vastly over represented in Richmond compared to probably any other borough in the country.

Its is following the exact same pattern of Hale Barns just outside Manchester which has a very similar social profile (and suburb type location).

Yes but the council leader had seen the location of test of 49 recent tests as being Exeter, Manchester, Durham, Leeds. If that doesn't have student written all over it....

To answer my own question I doing this link: www.gov.uk/guidance/notifiable-diseases-and-causative-organisms-how-to-report

Which suggests that data reporting is GP driven. And as the council see the data as part of the process then this also makes sense of the Richmond council claims.

I am very sceptical about the Richmond claims.

Firstly, I couldn’t find anything about this on Richmond Council website. Or any other information apart from the Standard where this is from.

The article says the postcodes relate to Leeds, Manchester, Durham and Exeter. Having studied these university webpages, the first three are advising their students to book a test through the normal NHS website or app of they have symptoms.

If you are booking through NHS, you enter a postcode to find local test centres or to get a postal test. It would be very odd if Manchester students from Richmond were entering a postcode in Richmond as they would be then told about test centres around Richmond and wouldn’t be able to get there and get tested (in rare cases I suppose they might travel).

The only non NHS testing in those unis was Exeter. They have a private service set up using Halo (incidentally, this is a saliva test). As I am not a student, I can’t look up what data you have to enter to get tested.

Other universities who are doing their own testing seem to be asking for student addresses to send testing kits out to (ie Southampton), so these would also not be parental home addresses.

Finally, if you did book a test using the “wrong” address, there is no way to know that this has happened when looking at the data. There isn’t any cross checking to see that John Smith was born on 01/01/1990 lives at AB1 1AB. His test would have to be allocated to the postcode he entered and no one would ever know if he did or didn’t actually live there.

Therefore as far as I can tell, this seems to be a made up story based on nothing.

Sorry completely off topic but I've just twigged that the Richmond you are all talking about isn't the one near me (Yorkshire).
As you were.

OK, so I disagree : deaths are facts. Reduce them to a statistic with 'underlying health condition' continuously appended and you get a very dangerous empathy fatigue.

Agree.

Sorry if I've missed it but do we know what counts as an 'underlying condition'. It seems mental health conditions, which shouldn't affect longevity, are included. I have PCOS, would that be included? From my reading PCOS puts me at risk for some conditions but doesn't lower my life expectancy in general. What about ingrown toenails or severe tendonitis (I'd hope not but who knows)? I'd love to know what proportion of the general population has 'underlying condition' using the criteria applied? Is it smallish (1-2%) or large (25% or higher)? I sort of get the impression it's the latter, given the inclusion of mental health conditions.

The dismissal of deaths also misses the important fact that many people with underlying health conditions / who are older are important members of society. I seem to remember a news article early on about the number of senior hospital consultants who were BME and who died from coronavirus. These consultants were mostly over 60, some had 'underlying conditions' but still very much working full time and will not be easily replaced - the NHS already has a recruitment crisis.

I've had this with my kids and wondered if it was because I had wild chickenpox as a child and breastfed them for a couple of years each -- it was so weird that they didn't catch it on several occasions of close contact, that I did wonder if I had unintentionally conferred some (probably temporary) antibodies on them...

Unlikely to be full immunity. I knew a bfing paediatrician who described her eldest getting it twice mildly potentially due to bf; we certainly had scarlet fever twice when I was bfing him though the Gp said there was a lot about.

The number of times my eldest dodged the cp virus but caught bloody everything else was astounding.

they both got it a month before lockdown 🙄