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
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@Piggywaspushed I've not seen that as Beds business. I live just over the border in Northants and they do something similar that I can't find right now.

I do wonder if there's something in the uni address things. In Northants the country leafy high income areas are now jumping ahead of the local towns. It's been the opposite all they way through so far.

That's what I mean. The issue wouldn't presumably be any more of a particular thing in Richmond (or anywhere else in London) than elsewhere

Students don't just come from London. They come from all parts of the UK

So if Richmond's figures are skewed because of that, so must we assume is everywhere

Not necessarily all parts of the UK.

Areas without universities would get more positive test results. Areas with universities would get less, or similar if for every student testing positive who doesn’t reside in the town there is a positive case from a student who does live in the town but put their address as elsewhere

Or it could mean that university areas could be under reporting the numbers

Here’s Surrey information. No positivity rates though and no extra information than the national statistics:
www.surreycc.gov.uk/people-and-community/emergency-planning-and-community-safety/coronavirus/testing/figures-and-statistics

Regarding student postcodes- the question still remains: if they are giving their parents home postcode when getting tested, how does anyone then know they are a student somewhere else? Where is that second piece of information coming from? And where are they getting tested as they would either be sent a kit or directed to a testing centre near their parents home address?

Another daily reader of these threads - coming on to say thank you to all of you who are pulling the data and analysing it.
I'm astounded at some of the apparent lack of foresight within the government- I'm writing to my mp today with a link to the threads and a suggestion of a mumsnet - data - thread advisory position within central government .....

Hampshire: documents.hants.gov.uk/public-health/jsna-covid19/Hampshire-WeeklyC-19Intelligence-05102020.pdf

@Hmmph thanks - interesting for me as I'm Hampshire. The last slide/ pic - is that meant to be deaths WITHIN hampshire? I'm assuming so, but it doesn't actually say that.

The question about students and postcode could be answered more easily if we know exactly how cases are allocated to a particular area.

I’ve had a test (negative) and the only location info I gave was the postcode when trying to find my nearest test. I also gave my name and date of birth so I suppose they could have found an address from that but it seems odd to do that, as surely the most accurate info on where I am is the postcode I give them.

Also, it doesn’t make much sense for students to complete that field with their “home” address because it asks where you are, not where you live. Could it be that walk in places where you don’t need to book a test are asking for postcodes on the spot, and many students won’t know their uni postcode so give the one they do know?

That would explain why the majority of student cases are being allocated to their current location (hence hotspots in student residential areas) but some are being allocated to their “home” (hence Richmond postcode data).

London aware posters - what’s different about the bit of London (Stamford Hill and Tottenham) that’s going darker blue very quickly on the map, compared to the rest of London?

@ChloeCrocodile

The question about students and postcode could be answered more easily if we know exactly how cases are allocated to a particular area.

I’ve had a test (negative) and the only location info I gave was the postcode when trying to find my nearest test. I also gave my name and date of birth so I suppose they could have found an address from that but it seems odd to do that, as surely the most accurate info on where I am is the postcode I give them.

Also, it doesn’t make much sense for students to complete that field with their “home” address because it asks where you are, not where you live. Could it be that walk in places where you don’t need to book a test are asking for postcodes on the spot, and many students won’t know their uni postcode so give the one they do know?

That would explain why the majority of student cases are being allocated to their current location (hence hotspots in student residential areas) but some are being allocated to their “home” (hence Richmond postcode data).

Yes I posted about this yesterday, it’s strange. And in fact when I booked my DDs test I accidentally put my name but her DOB and it wasn’t questioned. The only thing I wondered is that it does ask for NHS number so that could be used, but that’s an optional field and I can’t imagine many students know theirs off by heart! I wonder whether parents are “helping” them book tests?

Buckinghamshire

www.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/coronavirus/buckinghamshire-coronavirus-figures/

Just over 5% positivity rate

wintertravel1980 On Manaus, it looks from the hospital data that the number of covid cases is fairly flat but private hospitals have had a recent large rise. It would seem that rather than reinfections or a lot of spread amongst groups that were hard hit earlier the virus has now reached the richer parts of society which were able to work from home or afford to socially isolate earlier in the year. Deaths are a tiny fraction of what they were though.

I'm just posting the excerpt from an article I posted up thread as we were just discussing what might happen in the ne tomorrow and there's some relevant but relating to student postcodes and Richmond.

The numbers published by Newcastle on a daily dashboard have been reduced so I wonder if that's what'a being discussed and it may be the same for other areas.

But then on the Arcgis map numbers do seem v high for where students are living so are they being double counted?! I suspect not but it highlights the confusion.

*"I think it may be impacting on the rates of transmission and I would like to see that go on a bit longer rather than keep chopping and changing, which I think makes the confusion worse.”

Prof Milne said that the local lockdownn_ measures introduced on September 18 had produced an impact in all seven North East council areas they affected and that it was “too soon to say” what the effect of further tightening those rules to ban households mixing in any indoor setting on September 30 has been.

It was confirmed on Thursday that more than 1,000 Newcastle University students and 619 at Northumbria University had tested positive for the virus in the past week, but Prof Milne says those outbreaks are “potentially containable”.

He added that 15 to 24-year-olds already had the highest rate of infection in the city before students returned, that students were not responsible for a rising tide of cases generally, and that the outbreak among students could still be contained because they are largely mixing with each other rather than the wider community.

Prof Milne also said Covid-related hospital admissions in Newcastle have not risen in the way that they have in the North West and that death rates in the city remain at average levels for the past five years.

The council’s Liberal Democrat opposition has now requested a scrutiny investigation into the effectiveness of planning by the universities, council, and public health for the return of students to the city during the pandemic.

Coun Nick Cott, Lib Dem leader, said it was “important to establish the extent to which differing plans and expectation levels have been prepared for a small number of cases on campus, rather than for a mass outbreak off campus in student residences and shared houses”.

The opposition also called for clarity on why the huge number of student Covid cases reported by the universities were greater than the council’s own published numbers for the entire city.

The council said this was because the university’s numbers came from their own self-reporting system rather than those confirmed through NHSS_ Test and Trace.

Prof Milne said that self-reported data from students was “more reliable” for monitoring the university outbreaks, as many results through Test and Trace are being attributed to students’ home addresses rather than university addresses – so are, therefore, not included in Newcastle’s figures.*

www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/public-health-newcastle-pubs-closure-19080595

(I'm still half asleep due to toddler antics so need to read the conversation more carefully!)

Actually, Newcastle dashboard was updated with the missing data and still looks bad though possibly a slight level off??

It's very confusing. We really do need to clarify everywhere what figures are where. It's just that on the map the majority of dark blue areas are clearly where students live.

I know that the South still have low numbers but these results are more than doubling each week. BCP rise is probably explained by the Uni and Arts College (this is not being covered in the local media) but the Dorset one is less clear, unless they are uni students elsewhere being counted at home. I can see the testing center and this is the first week where there have been queues of cars, so at least people can book tests.

@GetAMoveOnTroodon the areas you mentioned are home to a large ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, impacted hard in the first wave and suffering badly again in the second wave.

Or it could mean that university areas could be under reporting the numbers

Prof Milne seems to think not though that's what it looks like!

Thanks, @SarahMused.

It may support the hypothesis that we are now seeing a "flare" in the subset of the population that was previously protected from the spread.

Yes I posted about this yesterday, it’s strange. And in fact when I booked my DDs test I accidentally put my name but her DOB and it wasn’t questioned.
The only thing I wondered is that it does ask for NHS number so that could be used, but that’s an optional field and I can’t imagine many students know theirs off by heart! I wonder whether parents are “helping” them book tests?

This was also my experience. Based on all the evidence about how everything else is done, I really don’t think they are cross checking anything. The ONLY way to know location is that you enter a postcode when booking a test.

But if I put in a Richmond postcode, you would never know I wasn’t in Richmond. There is no other information to link anyone to a university apart from the one postcode and if you put in a Richmond postcode, there would be no way to know I was actually in Leeds.

One possibility I can see is that Unis are asking students to self report coronavirus symptoms and positive tests to them. This is independent of the testing system and is just a self report for the university records. As I am not a student, I can’t see the information they ask for when reporting. It is possible they ask for parent home address and then the uni lets the parent’s council know this? But the council shouldn’t then be counting them as that would be double counting.

Otherwise it might be the NHS tracing system if the student has only just moved to University and their contacts include them at their parents home address. But again, the council shouldn’t be counting contacts as cases.

@littleowl1 and @Augustbreeze the weekly surveillance now integrates flu data as of last week and my guess is will be standardised across the board.
The PHE Twitter feed is mostly automated now, and doesn't respond to queries (ie I suspect it's unmanned) and the DHSC Twitter feed doesn't mention the daily data releases.

There's a hefty amount of data on the gov.uk website which is never making it into the public consciousness at all but increasingly you have to drill down and down for it (as a case in point the ONS survey on Covid and the social impacts on the UK, the link shows the previous quarter's data but there is a new one: the gov.uk website hasn't been updated)

It feels as if resource is being moved away from the gov.uk site - they're nowhere near as responsive or proactive as they were some months ago. Silly housekeeping things like the message about the site being maintained that was up on Friday night, disappeared during the day on Saturday and then came back on Saturday night, or the message about waiting for data or technical issues that doesn't go up till four hours after the data was expected.

I think the data will still be collected. I just suspect the current format of its presentation will be unsupported - it's evidently already been scaled back.

Does that conclusion make sense, from a communications perspective?

Sorry to keep going on about Richmond and students, but this is Nottingham University testing page, which is an interesting read:

www.nottingham.ac.uk/coronavirus/exhibiting-covid-19-symptoms.aspx

Those with symptoms are told to book tests through the normal NHS/Gov testing. They enter the same details as everyone else (ie a postcode).

They are also being asked to self report to the university. This is linked to them getting support.

Nottingham has also recently (from 5 October, so any figures wouldn’t be included yet) started their own asymptotic testing of Halls of residence where they think there might be an outbreak.

Apologies if anyone has already linked but here are the data tables behind the latest surveillance report, which I personally find easier to read than their charts

Highest rates in the 10-19 age groups, and 20-29, but some interesting differences between male and female rates in the next couple of age bands (which I didn’t spot looking at the charts) with male almost double.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/925095/Weekly_Influenza_and_COVID19_report_data_w41.xlsx

(And also shows more clearly the massive regional variations which we already saw from the chart)

Thanks for all the positivity figures everyone - very interesting!

I did read somewhere that you would expect pillar 2 positivity rates to increase somewhat as fewer people without symptoms got tests, following the shortage of capacity - not sure how much effect that would have had recently.

I seem to remember Richmond has a very high proportion of school leavers going to university - maybe one of the highest? (from memory only) So that may make the 'where do students get recorded' particularly relevant to it. Otoh isn't it thought that lots of northern cities' increases are student-driven? - so many of the students are being recorded in their current residence? (I'm assuming there is no double-counting of them .....)

It will be interesting to see if there is much in what is being reported re Richmond.

I’m not convinced how huge a problem it is though - I get littleowls emails and my borough and the surrounding 5 boroughs have all doubled in 7 days. So although Richmond has jumped a bit more ( and had stayed lower than the other boroughs in the summer) it’s not crazily out of line with its surrounding boroughs which don’t all share the demographics with Richmond. It seems something worth sorting out but shouldn’t be too much of a distraction.

Did anyone post the Sat figures?

On Saturday, 15,166 people in the UK were reported to have tested positive for coronavirus - up 1,302 on Friday's figure, according to the government's dashboard. There were a further 81 deaths - a decrease of six on Fri

From here quoting Prof Van-Tamm also

I owe someone 5p