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
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I do believe that primary school children tend not to get the 3 PHE symptoms in high numbers. I don't believe - until I see actual analysis testing close contacts - that there isn't a 50% -90% asymptomatic rate that could well be spreading to parents and beyond (ideally following up on close contacts of positive asymptomatic cases so we actually get data on how often this is happening).

covid.joinzoe.com/post/back-to-school#:~:text=The%20top%20five%20symptoms%20in,loss%20of%20appetite%20(35%25). 52% don't log 'adult' symptoms which would trigger test
www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.29.2001352?mc_source=MTExMDY2Ojo6OTgxM2NkZDM4OGRjNGFlM2JhY2RhNWIyZTNlODhkOTE6OnYzOjoxNTk2NDc1MjIzOjox#html_fulltext - 57% students asymptomatic
approx 90% students asymptomatic Northumbria www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-54394199

I don't know any doctors in the NW but in Yorkshire and the Midlands there is lots of planning to increase covid capacity. It was all done swiftly and seamlessly last time. But I hope it doesn't involve cancelling everything else this autumn/winter.

Better use of the Nightingales is surely key.

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!

@Qasd

Do you have any support for the idea that they are actually not catching it, rather than just not showing symptoms so not being tested? Given that we know they are less likely to have classic covid symptoms, and I'm not aware of any studies of randomly sampled school children, I am not convinced that is the case.

1080 cases in northern Ireland today. Very worrying upwards trend

I want to see data on secondary transmission though.

I feel uncomfortable supporting that statement when we know that

1. 50%+ of younger children are asymptomatic (and we don't test all when there's a case so don't know how many are).

1. Asymptomatic people / children can transmit. We don't know the full picture there yet but that's important to note we don't know.

The high numbers of uni students testing positive asymptomatically concern me re schools.

@BigChocFrenzy

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

Have you ever been to Knowsley?

You have to get on the train at Prescot and then you can either go to Liverpool Lime Street or go to Wigan North Western. And thats it without a transfer onwards from there.

Next nearest stations are both in St Helens.

There's pretty much the transpennine route or the west coast mainline as options for rail transfer. I'm not convinced they are realistic. We are so heavily reliant on the road network in the NW.

Its not the rail operator I'd be worried about.

Is there any data on % of asymptomatic cases? Anecdotally, all I'm hearing is that the majority of people who are testing positive are either asymptomatic or suffering a very mild case. It would be interesting (and probably reassuring) to see severity (asymptomatic/mild/severe) broken down by age group.

@IloveJKRowling

ONS survey has got nothing to do with the three main symptoms.

ONS tests a random sample of people so any growth in the asymptomatic primary school children would be picked up through their survey. However it does not appear to be there. The numbers of infected children stay flat (or almost flat) while the numbers of cases in most of the other age groups keep going up.

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?
Takes 45 to 50 mins Chester to Crewe, Crewe to Liverpool over an hour, similar for Chester.
There's also Arrowe Park and Clatterbridge in the Wirral.
Crewe send cardiac patents to Royal Stoke, as do the N Wales hospitals.

@cathyandclare

I don't know any doctors in the NW but in Yorkshire and the Midlands there is lots of planning to increase covid capacity. It was all done swiftly and seamlessly last time. But I hope it doesn't involve cancelling everything else this autumn/winter.

Better use of the Nightingales is surely key.

How are you going to staff them?

That was always the problem for the Nightingales.

@pussycatinboots

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? Takes 45 to 50 mins Chester to Crewe, Crewe to Liverpool over an hour, similar for Chester. There's also Arrowe Park and Clatterbridge in the Wirral. Crewe send cardiac patents to Royal Stoke, as do the N Wales hospitals.

45 to 50 minutes EACH WAY for an ambulance. Thats time an ambulance isn't available in hot spots.

Its fine for a small number of cases.

But at peak demand?

More difficult.

Red I could get from Crewe to Chester in a car in 35 by breaking the speed limit, but believe me, it would be bouncy in the back of an ambulance. The roads are absolutely shit, single lane, through villages, full of lorries.

Just to be clear I was commenting on the data from the ons survey. This is different in that they are testing the same group of 20,000 people across the population every week whether they have symptoms or not, in fact previously the majority did not have symptoms on the day they tested positive.

This week they have provided a breakdown by age of infection and are showing that...

• largest infection group year 12 to age 24
• smallest over 70
• aged two to year 6 children have the same infection rate as the 50-64 group and are next lowest after the over 70 group.

This is not impacted by “only testing those with symptoms” which is the Cristian of the phe data and children.

It’s one data set obviously but a reasonably reliable source and given this is a group not socially distancing a lot of the time and not wearing masks it would seem they still have avoided a high infection rate.

@IloveJKRowling - you are in the data thread and can see the same links to all the information as everyone else. You see lower positivity and say "ah but how many tests", you see higher test volumes and say "oh but different symptoms", you see randomised tests of people selected from the general population and say "asymptomatic" despite knowing tests pick up asymptomatic cases. You ignore data from the UK, will only accept any report with any child infected from other countries and ignore the much larger set stating that young children have been infected less, including random sampling from all around the world. This has gone on for months and is getting really irritating now. Please talk about other data, but please just stop derailing data-driven discussions with post after post of the same comments because you refuse to accept any data you see that does not align with your personal deeply-held false belief that young children are actually responsible for most of the spread of covid.

@Qasd

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.

We can't possibly tell the true rate as children are more likely to be asymptomatic and therefore not eligible for testing. (Or, as the research from the Zoe app points out, they may have different symptoms from adults that aren't recognised -- eg gastrointestinal).

The large Princeton-led study on India did indicate that children play an important role in transmission.

It's hard though as that age group are so young that distancing and mask-wearing isn't really easy or desirable from a psychological perspective. But there is much more of a case for smaller class sizes / bubbles, and for parents to be given free choice about attendance -- currently parents are forced to send their children in or be fined or lose their school place.

@MRex I've turned off tagging, so that is pointless. My point was that if the testing service was not privatised I would expect it to have had waste water results well before now - and to be pooling tests to allow faster processing of results. I'd also expect proactive testing of places expected to cause problems - so all meat processing places.

Who is seeing waste water results, as SAGE and MPs dont seem to refer to them, implying they dont have them.

[quote wintertravel1980]@IloveJKRowling

ONS survey has got nothing to do with the three main symptoms.

ONS tests a random sample of people so any growth in the asymptomatic primary school children would be picked up through their survey. However it does not appear to be there. The numbers of infected children stay flat (or almost flat) while the numbers of cases in most of the other age groups keep going up.[/quote]
This is interesting. Are there any statistics on the number of children tested for ons.
I would like to know as the test can be invasive for young children and the uptake may not be as high.
It is reassuring if a significant proportion are regularly tested and infections are low.

A lot of primary children without the main 3 symptoms were tested when schools were sent back as anything from a snotty nose got them sent home from school abs told not to return without a negative test

Than and primary school age positivity rate has always been and stayed low shows the main problem is not that age group

@alreadytaken - we don't know, I've sent emails and been told they are still analysing the findings. I'd say there must be something soon, but I said that in early September and here we are with still no sewage report to look at.

London's coronavirus figures 'skewed by university students in other cities'

Figures may be skewed, but also we don't know how many students will have subsequently brough back home to London by their parents - quite a number, if MN is at all representative

www.standard.co.uk/news/health/london-covid-stats-skewed-university-students-a4567441.html

However, an analysis of 412 positive cases in Richmond since September 20 found that out of 212 for which the council has postcodes,
49 of them were for places including Leeds, Exeter, Manchester and Durham.

They were nearly all in the 17-21 age group.

The assumption is that these are London students whose cases have been recorded using their home addresses, possibly through details given of their GP.

The pattern is likely to be replicated in areas across the capital and wider country,
however it may be more marked in Richmond given the high number of students who come from the borough.

We cant make good use of nightingales, they cant be staffed. They may be useful for taking people who need care and have to be cleared out to make more covid wards.

We cant ship people around the country as we dont have enough ambulances and ambulance staff to even get people to their nearest hospital promptly. My advice to anyone needing to get to hospital is to take a taxi if you cant drive.

The NHS has become adept at repurposing wards, unfortunately it cant magic up staff trained in intensive care so if you need to be intubated it may be by a gynaecologist.

With more children in school the children of NHS staff are more likely to be sick = more staff off work.

The numbers in hospital now are at the same level as when we locked down, no point in trying to pretend they are different. It is not cherry picking a date to go for the day lockdown started. The numbers re growing more slowly at the moment but we havent started lockdown.

@Reastie I share your frustration on the positivity rates not being published - recognising some council areas (only a minority) are trying to publish something. The non public NHS p2 dashboard has positivity rates down to LSOA level , so it’s not as if the data is not being calculated and updated daily; it’s just not being openly shared and published.

Students in London may be recorded at their home address - so there may be students in London with their address reported as Leeds, Exeter, Manchester and Durham. Shouldnt think there will be lots living in Richmond but that could affect other London boroughs.

If that's the case then maybe there needs to be official advice on testing that university address must be used. It's hard for anyone to know where the cases are otherwise.