Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 25

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 25 of the daily updates

Resource links

UK:
Uk dashboard R, deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - by postcode, 4 nations, English regions, LAs
Interactive 7-day rolling cases map click on map or by postcode
UK govt pressers Slides & data
SAGE Table Interventions with impacts and R
Imperial UK weekly tables & extrapolations LAs, cases / 100k, table, map, hotspots
School statistics Attendance - Tuesdays
ICNRC Intensive Care National Audit & Research reports
UK testing and NHS England track & trace - Thursdays
ONS Roundup deaths, infections & economic reports
ONS England, Wales & NI Infection surveillance report - Fridays
ONS Datasets for surveillance reports
Our World in Data UK test positivity
R estimates & daily growth UK & English regions - Fridays
Modelling real number of UK infections February in first wave

England:
NHS England Hospital activity
NHS England Daily deaths
PHE COVID Clinical Risk Factors Non-respiratory by region, area, district etc
MSAO Map of English cases
Cases Tracker England Local Government
PHE surveillance reports Covid, flu, respiratory diseases - Thursdays
CovidMessenger live update by council district in England

Scotland, Wales, NI:
Scot gov Daily data
Scotland TravellingTabby LAs, care homes, hospitals, tests, t&t
PH Wales LAs, tests, ONS deaths
NI Dashboard

Miscell:
Zoe Uk data
ECDC rolling 14-day incidence EEA & UK
Worldometer UK page
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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Links added to OP:

• SAGE Table of Interventions with impacts and R
• PHE COVID Clinical Risk Factors by region, area

Links changed

• PHE Covid surveillance is now Covid & flu

BigChocFrenzy imo those in care homes who have awareness and have lost family visits are suffering You are entitled to your opinion it doesn't change my experience. It really isn't the same situation in all homes or for all residents who surprisingly vary as much as the rest of us. We have people who have lived in the home for 20 years and staff who have been there just as long. Relationships between residents and between residents and staff are excellent.

If you can access Sky news have a look at their report, an elderly woman crying at leaving the home she has lived in for years and the staff crying with her. The staff are there 24/7, family aren't.

People should look at homes carefully as they vary greatly. When my friend was looking to buy a care home we looked at one that was truly disgusting, 4 old ladies in what would be a normal double bedroom, no privacy and the smell was disgusting. It was a world away from the home she now owns. It is sad that the good get damned with the inadequate, poor and truly dreadful.

@Defenbaker

BigChocFrenzy posted:

"Their calculated population IFR of 0.5% is in the range of most others (without a political agenda !) for the current situation"

@BigChocFrenzy From what I've seen of Dr Campbell's videos, he seems to be a caring man, who has integrity, and he tries to use data from reliable sources, as and when research/data studies become published/available. He posts links to the sources that he quotes, and sometimes passes comment, if he believes that the methodology used was flawed in any way. He does not seem to have any political agenda.

It may well turn out that the overall IFR is 0.5%, or higher, but that won't be known until the end of the pandemic, when the final death count is known for each country. Obviously, the death rate for countries with a larger number of elderly people is likely to be much higher than those with younger populations, but there are so many other factors that will affect the IFR - population density, availability of healthcare, weather patterns, cultural practices, mitigation measures and vitamin D levels.

I like this thread - lots of logical, well thought out comments, and very little political sniping or hysteria.

... Campbell seems honest and a very decent bloke, I agree absolutely no agenda

However, for IFR I would look at a range of peer-reviewed studies yourself, rather than relying on the conclusions of 1 person, without official resources
If he's like most of us scientists, his opinions will develop as the evidence comes in (and will be more reliable in his own speciality)

0.3 % for a Western population is very much at the low end of current scientific consensus
Studies indicate a lot higher that in the first wave,
although it may indeed turn out to be near the mark for this 2nd wave, after the improvements in treatment and services

I'd suggest taking additionally a figure at the higher end, say 0.8%, to give an upper and lower bound for your estimates of those infected and probably immune.
Remember too, that in Europe nearly all deaths were in the first wave, so need the IFR for then

Just wanted to add that when looking at death rates it might be worth looking at what has happened with GP and other NHS services. In my relatives home all services stopped in the home I help in we had normal GP and nurse visits.

If you are interested in data about care homes it is worth looking at CQC reports, homes will have a score in various areas from excellent down to failing and beyond failing the home can be closed. Quite a variation.

ancientgran I agree that care homes vary tremendously in quality
and that the reliance on family visits also varies

Whatever the quality, most frail elderly residents would be utterly distraught, at least initially, at being made homeless and being put somewhere else they didn't choose

That may be yet another issue within this crisis:

. an unusually high number of residents died over a short period
. probably some families with a choice, or the elderly person themself, have postponed going into a home

A number of care homes were going broke even before this crisis

Any sector of the economy that was experiencing financial difficulties is likely to find them exacerbated during this pandemic,
by the extra demands of SD and the effect on finances, customers / clients and staff workload

This is the most recent ONS report on care homes, but mostly covers the 1st wave period, so not up to date:

Deaths involving COVID-19 in the care sector, England and Wales: deaths occurring up to 12 June 2020 and registered up to 20 June 2020 (provisional)

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/deathsinvolvingcovid19inthecaresectorenglandandwales/deathsoccurringupto12june2020andregisteredupto20june2020provisional

@alreadytaken - regional employment stats are here: www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/regionallabourmarket/october2020.
I posted furlough figures earlier in the thread:www.gov.uk/government/statistics/coronavirus-job-retention-scheme-statistics-september-2020.

I don't think this is a simple stats question; it's worth remembering that lots of people were still working throughout from home and out of the home. Not just key workers and not just employed people. Some people have multiple jobs and some people are never economically active nor included in benefits due to relying on a partner's wage. You can add up employed, furloughed and benefits - but I don't think it will tell you who fell through the cracks as not being entitled to any payment nor able to work.

We need a quick & easy payment of full wages - using existing PAYE details - so that people don't have to choose between essential bills and isolating

There is another thread on AIBU from someone looking for approval to send her child back because test results have not arrived after 5 days
She complains she is missing out on a week's pay she can't afford to lose.
I womder how many like her are sending their kids in like that, or even just lying and not getting them tested at all.

An example of where payment would really improve compliance

Awkward position for the police:

Greater Manchester Policee@gmpolice*

Open letter from GMP's Chief Constable, Ian Hopkins @CCIanHopkins

@BigChocFrenzy I took a look back and the study related to death rates in England. Here is a link:

During the early stages of the pandemic, people said the death rate could be 1%, or higher, so a rate of 0.3% is lower than many feared. Even if the IFR does end up being the lower figure of 0.3% (around 1 in 300), that means that most people will lose someone they know, because most people know 300 (or more) people.

Landslide election victory just announced for Jacinda Ardern, Labour's biggest in 50 years
It shows that leaders can get it right
and those who do, can reap the political rewards too

BCF I don't know if there are stats but it is generally accepted in the sector that moving elderly people from one home to another can bring death forward. The woman they showed on Sky news was 85 and in her third home, that has got to be unsettling for anyone not to mention the weeks when she just didn't know where she was going.

Yes home were closing before this but this will have speeded it up for many, in some cases not a bad thing but for many it will be deeply upsetting.

[quote Defenbaker]@BigChocFrenzy I took a look back and the study related to death rates in England. Here is a link:

During the early stages of the pandemic, people said the death rate could be 1%, or higher, so a rate of 0.3% is lower than many feared. Even if the IFR does end up being the lower figure of 0.3% (around 1 in 300), that means that most people will lose someone they know, because most people know 300 (or more) people.[/quote]
...
There will probably be debate for many years over what the IFR was, even among independent scientists

We know IFR is different for different ages - so very difficult to estimate for a country, when it depends on who catches it -
and also that IFR has been reduced by new treatments vompared to the 1st wave

I'll go with the 0.5% consensus atm, rather than an outlier opinion, but that consensus would change if the data dies

Even if the IFR does end up being the lower figure of 0.3% (around 1 in 300), that means that most people will lose someone they know, because most people know 300 (or more) people.

Not quite - that requires you knowing 300 people who get Covid, not that you just know 300 people. I think it's safe to assume that we won't all catch Covid before there are significant mitigations/a vaccine.

Yes, even if the 2nd wave to Spring is comparable to the first, that's likely < 10% of the population who will actually be infected

Encouraging progress

ICNARC report showing the fall in COVID mortality across all demographic groups between 1st wave (blue) and 2nd (orange)

www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/8fee8e2a-d50f-eb11-912b-00505601089b

The geographical distibution of critical care patients shows the obvious difference 1st / 2nd waves
London and the South vs NW and NE

Also of course, the sheer numbers, since this is still early days for 2nd wave

We don't know if London will experience similar high numbers, in winter

16171 cases
higher than yesterday but lower than quite a lot of recent days. I think we thought we'd be over 20k by now.

On the IFR, I wonder if the IFR for the elderly is skewed upwards by care home outbreaks. A care home resident may be expected to be more vulnerable than others of the same age. If care home residents were more likely to be infected than other elderly (almost certainly true in March/April) then an IFR which does not control for care home status, may overstate the true IFR by age group.

Unfortunately, the number for processed tests has not been updated but positive cases on their own seem to indicate the spread might be slowing down.

I have quickly looked at the positive tests by date of specimen for past few Mondays (England only):

14/9 - 2,895
21/9 - 4,696 (+62% week on week)
28/9 - 8,566 (+82% week on week)
5/10 - 13,997 (+63% week on week)
12/10 - 15,669 (might still change so even if we round it up to 16,000 - +14% week on week)

These are very crude calculations and ideally we should look at 7 day averages but based on history Monday to Monday comparisons seem to give a reasonable picture of the speed of the transmission.

+14% is still up but it looks better than +82% in mid-Sep.

Cases only up by around 1000 on last Saturday. Are we decelerating...?

Problem is, I think, that true community spread has been masked by the University outbreaks over the past few weeks. I live in a town with two universities and if the figures being published locally are to be believed, students account for the vast majority of infections. Certainly the 'hotspots' coincide entirely with the main University campuses and the core student housing areas.

Care homes are inevitable for a significant and rising % of elderly people, especially 90+
so are schools for most children 5-17

Does it make sense to try to separate into those who attend institutions and those who don't, when it is so bound up with age ?

If we look at a graph of the IFR for different ages, whether from Spiegelhalter,
or that more recent paper I posted upthread on age-related IFR,

there seems a quite smooth mathematical relationship between age and IFR:

https://medium.com/wintoncentre/how-much-normal-risk-does-covid-represent-4539118e1196

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v6.full.pdf

@clarexbp

Cases only up by around 1000 on last Saturday. Are we decelerating...?

Problem is, I think, that true community spread has been masked by the University outbreaks over the past few weeks. I live in a town with two universities and if the figures being published locally are to be believed, students account for the vast majority of infections. Certainly the 'hotspots' coincide entirely with the main University campuses and the core student housing areas.

I just think we are due for some huge corrections as extra cases are found 'from the back of the sofa'.....

Annoyingly I didn't keep a record of daily infections in my 5 local areas, as per littleowls excellent daily updates. However, I have noticed a definite slowdown, from a very low base, of 2 or 3, to 10, then to 20 per day, pretty quickly, it seems to have stabilised at 15 to 20 per day over the last few days (Elmbridge still the outlier in total terms, but theirs has also stabilised).