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
📈 📉 📊 👍

@IloveJKRowling

There are other charts on this week’s surveillance report that show clearly that education and workplaces are by far the most likely places to catch it. Hospitality only actually accounts for single figure percentages Overall.

Of course the difference between hospitality and education is that the former have strict SD / mask wearing rules and the latter have virtually none.

I'm afraid it increasingly looks like a national policy of head in the sand over educational settings. So irresponsible toward ECV teachers, children and parents.

I completely agree. I think it is so irresponsible that they are not being transparent with the data about schools or looking seriously at how effective the risk mitigation measures are. More worryingly, parents are being forced to continue sending their children to school even if they have concerns or vulnerabilities.

I've found a few petitions that look worth signing in terms of schools:

Make wearing face masks mandatory in secondary schools and colleges: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/330227

Suspend fines for school non-attendance during Covid-19 & allow parental choice: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/551740

There was also an excellent one on Change by BRTUS Parents United but it seems to have closed now and to have been handed in.

@alreadytaken - the UK is already testing waste water in every area, we just don't have the results published to the wider population yet.

@Popcornriver

Does anyone know if it's true that there is now more in hospitals with covid than there was when we went into lockdown in March?

If it is true then doesn't that mean that's pretty much it and now it'll get out of control again since we're doing less restrictions now than we did in March

..... Hospitalisations are a small fraction of what they were in March-April

e.g. See latest slide on government briefing

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/925332/Evidenceepackparliamentaryyengagement.pdf

@Popcornriver

Does anyone know if it's true that there is now more in hospitals with covid than there was when we went into lockdown in March?

If it is true then doesn't that mean that's pretty much it and now it'll get out of control again since we're doing less restrictions now than we did in March

Yes that’s true for England according to the coronavirus dashboard - roughly 3,000 yesterday, same as 23 March coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare

Also R at lockdown was estimated to be 2.5, which is double the current R

Ceeveebee That is very misleading and cherry-picking a particular date to reach an alarmist conclusion

I didn’t mean to look as though I was correcting you, we cross posted
But I’d like to understand why you think that is misleading? If the dashboard is accurate then it’s a fact that there are the same number of people in hospital now with COVID as at 23 March? Which was the question?
And in fact more in the North West?

And I didn’t pick a date, I scrolled back to the first date that we hit 3,000 which happens to be 23 March!

Hospital admissions will surley be the best comparison regarding March/April and now. Hopefully deaths won't be as bad as medics know more about treatment than in the spring.

It's impossible to compare people in hospital now with March because we were testing so, so specifically then. Now everyone is routinely tested on admission and so people with ( for eg) a fractured hip and asymptomatic infection would count, as would an asymptomatic student who had taken an overdose.

It's great that we are testing widely and will help prevent nosocomial spread- but it means that the with Covid hospital figures will be higher.

Good balanced overview (English lang) of situation & strategies from Christian Drosten, Merkel's chief virologist

Discusses feasibility of up to 20 million anti-gen tests per month soon - after validation completed and if sufficient kits
and effectiveness of first gen vaccinations next year

https://www.zeit.de/wissen/2020-10/christian-drosten-coronavirus-infection-winter-virologist/komplettansicht?

.... The question is:
What kind of buffer do we have if we start seeing an increase in severe cases because a growing number of elderly people are getting infected again?

At the moment, there is still a significant buffer when it comes to clinical care.

But elsewhere in Europe, we can see that the hospitals have filled up again, for example in the south of France or in Madrid.

It is up to us to keep that from happening.
.....
I think it's important to find a threshold that distinguishes between infection and infectiousness.
One that not only shows whether a person is infected, but also whether that person is contagious.
.....
We could even see a reduction in capacity due to a lack of materials available
– not only the reagents, but also the disposable elements like the plastic parts.

That’s why we need to direct testing to where it is more likely to detect the disease.

This helps the public health authorities in contact tracing as well as the individual patients themselves.

==> And in cases of positive tests, the family doctor needs to keep track of those patients to prevent the seriously ill from getting to the hospital too late.
....
It's likely that 80 percent of all adults do show symptoms, if you count runny noses and sore throats
Please pay attention.
And if you do exhibit such symptoms, stay home
....
It is a virus that is extremely dangerous for people in the last 10 years of their working life – it cannot be compared with influenza at all.

And for people in their first 10 years of retirement, it must absolutely be avoided.

@BigChocFrenzy

Also R at lockdown was estimated to be 2.5, which is double the current R

I think this is fine but the problem isn't the R. Its the number of overall cases and what the number of beds per head of population is in that area.

We know that whilst the R is lower now, the NW has a lower number of beds per head of population and the logistics of transfer much harder considering the pattern of the region being so disportionately hit atm. That means transfers are going to be much, much harder to do.

You can do that much better in London due to the availability of more beds per head of population and transport networks being better and transfer times / distances less.

What happens if Liverpool is over whelmed? Knowsley and Halton aren't much behind in terms of capacity.

The issue with Knowsley and Halton are they two areas that the back up plan would normally be Liverpool. After that it would be Manchester. And both look in a state which mean this is going to be exceptionally difficult. After that where are you looking at next for transfer? Thats the problem. Are you going to be diverting ambulances to A&E Leighton in Crewe or Chester, which would be my first thought as the nearest places which hasn't got such bad figures. Do you know how long round trips to do this take?

Or how do you get to the Manchester Nightgale if the ambulances are tied up and you live in Knowsley and don't have a car?

I'm looking at whats happening across the region with some real fear because - as its been said from the beginning - that regional services will find it much more difficult to cope if they get close to capacity than London did.

The R in the NW doesn't need to be as high as at the start of lockdown because its ratio of cases to provision of services within x number of miles that is the issue and more relevant than the R.

Also it is worth remembering that the bar for hospitalisations back in March was pretty high.

Right now the standards have been revised and many patients appear to be taken to hospital earlier (e.g. for early oxygen support).

Yes, that will be true, but even if someone is in hospital with milder symptoms and diagnosed with COVID, they have to be put on the COVID ward and isolated from other patients which uses up capacity quickly.
North west ventilation beds are currently at 1/3 of what they were at the peak. And from my contacts in the Manchester hospitals I know they have not done the same level of redeployment of medics and beds reallocation (yet) as the first wave. It is very concerning.

red Very unfair that the NW has fewer resources, but in this emergency the burden now needs to be shared across the country,
before it comes to ambulances

imo, patient transfers out of the NW hospitals need to happen now, to free up capacity,
to say London or the more lightly hit South & East, especially if transport is so difficult.

France in the 1st wave was whizzing patients around the country to hospitals with spare capacity
They even sent patients by rail and air into Germany and have reserved places in German ICU atm - OK, geography and a bad-tempered Brexit rule that out !

Looking at the recent ONS survey, I am not convinced that the evidence is there that primary aged school children are massively catching the virus and also massively spreading the virus.

I see a lot of comments about mask wearing in school and I am not against it. If my children got told to wear a mask on school then they would.

But its quite a lot to ask a young child, to wear a mask for over 6 hours a day when they really don't seem to catch it and spread it as much as others.

Comment is for primary school only.

France used their high-speed trains for patient transfers - I can see the concerns about using something like Virgin !

BCF

Definitely not Virgin - do they have trains anymore?

Time Is there data on asymptomatic children in schools? To see if they're catching it silently and then analysing to see if they're taking it home?

I'd really like to see this data that proves they're not spreading it.

@Timeforanotherusername

BCF

Definitely not Virgin - do they have trains anymore?

... I'm not sure you'd notice the difference whether they have trains !

@BigChocFrenzy

red Very unfair that the NW has fewer resources, but in this emergency the burden now needs to be shared across the country, before it comes to ambulances

imo, patient transfers out of the NW hospitals need to happen now, to free up capacity,
to say London or the more lightly hit South & East, especially if transport is so difficult.

France in the 1st wave was whizzing patients around the country to hospitals with spare capacity
They even sent patients by rail and air into Germany and have reserved places in German ICU atm - OK, geography and a bad-tempered Brexit rule that out !

Indeed. Is it happening though? Not a whisper about this being a planned strategy NOW which needs to happen.

My gut feeling was that the local news report last night about the impending bed crisis was the first public warning that there isn't a plan for this yet.

I do wonder how long it takes before the same story gets on the 6pm national news. My fear is when the problem starts to actually unfold.

I am finding watching how conversations on MN are developing between areas of local lockdown and areas still under the rule of six pretty revealling. There is this blindness to the reality of how different life is for many people living in the same country. The Christmas threads are the best ones.

I think it will come as a shock to many, even those in restricted areas, when the shit starts to hit the fan.

Totally agree re primary children. Given they are a group we are actively saying don’t need to socially distance for 6 hours a day, don’t need to wear masks etc they seem to have an infection rate fairly close to the over 50s who naturally will be being more cautious. Given this is a general survey aimed at ensuring we get a picture of those with and without symptoms I cannot see that the case for more restrictions in primary schools is made looking at the survey. Possibly a bit of a case for secondary schools, and big argument to think about what we are doing about further and higher education. But if young children were the superspreader that they are often claimed to be I would expect there infection rates to be amongst the highest in relation to a breakdown by age group and they seem to be one of the lowest.

Looking at the recent ONS survey, I am not convinced that the evidence is there that primary aged school children are massively catching the virus and also massively spreading the virus.

Yes, fully agree. In fact, I would argue there is sufficient ("beyond a reasonable doubt") evidence that primary aged children are not driving the spread.

Thanks for new thread

@Timeforanotherusername - yes, primary and age 25+ all have similar infection rates. Age 18-25 are 7 times more likely to be infected and age 11-18 twice as likely to be infected. Now, if we reasonably assume some kids aged 14-18 in secondary have higher risk (because all the previous graphs showed that), we see even just ages 16-17 could be driving most of the additional spread. I'm still seeing the same pattern we've had since April on childhood infection; there needs to be more mitigation in the 14+ group, and everyone needs to calm down about younger ages to enable correct focus on that.
What can be done about the older teenagers / early 20s I just don't know.