Data and analysis thread, started 12 November

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Data and Analysis Thread, started Oct 29 www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4064113-Data-and-Analysis-Thread-started-Oct-29

Regular lurker but I frequent poster, didn't want to lose the threads.

despite schools remaining fully open

Schools aren't fully open in Greater Manchester. Nowhere near.

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/more-200-greater-manchester-schools-19345542

noble I work in education in Manchester I know the situation intimately. What I meant was, the majority of schools at any one time have the majority of their classes open in the area. We have been like revolving doors since September. What I meant was, the huge drop in infection rates in GMcr since lockdown is because of other things that have closed. The schools, in the main, are no worse off than they have been all term.

Don't be disingenuous.

Don't be disingenuous.

You think that saying that schools have remained fully open when in fact thousands of kids are not in school meaning they are at best partly open is entirely honest?

They are mostly around 90-95 percent open at an estimate. Most of the secondary schools I know of are no longer sending home whole year groups but doing a track and trace and sending home clusters, forms and groups. I do know one or two schools which have briefly closed completely.

The point I am making is that the schools have worked bloody hard to stay open as much as possible and the situation they are in has not changed during lockdown. In fact I would say things seem mildly better in the past fortnight.

So my point that schools were clearly not THE vector of infection in Gtr Mcr holds, because they have done nothing different during lockdown, other places have closed, and numbers have absolutely crashed. Unless all schools coincidentally reached herd immunity at exactly the same time that lockdown was announced.

weekly update on p2 positivity. I've taken a rather different tack so these combine recent cases per 100,000 (last two sets of 7 day periods); cases per 100,000 in the aged 60 as from the latest dashboard fall, and then several weeks worth of p2 positivity. The proposed tier from Wednesday of each LA is also included.

The sort order is by highest positivity in the most recent week, so I'm afraid not as easy to go direct to an LA, and I may revert back to a region / LA sort next week dependent on which narrative I am most minded to advocate

First pic attached - so the the LAs with the highest recent positivity levels. The number of "2"s may give food for thought; although positivity is only one aspect of the decision making process of course.

next three sets

and the next 3. The old Buck's districts, in case anyone is wondering are still reported individually for cases per 100,000, but just at the new unitary level for positivity, hence the positivity figures being the same for each.

and the final three sets, in which a handful of Tier 3 LAs appear

@Witchend - cases would rise all areas if it was schools, and you would have a similar pattern of ages shown in the cases by age for different areas (more young kids then parents). Actually different areas clearly have very different patterns; by far the most common is infections rising rapidly in the 20-25 age group, then it spreads up to older ages, then down to kids. You'll be able to find boroughs though where infections look like they've started in any age category except under 10 or over 70.

@ceeveebee - there have been hospital and care home outbreaks in some areas (Including younger age care facilities), manufacturing facilities, prisons, university / further education and secondary schools. Teenagers and young adults still have illegal parties throughout. Then there are those people of the type who declare it "doesn't make sense" to not see their mum indoors etc. Loads of reasons basically.

Thanks for your efforts as always @boys3. Some of those positivity rates look stubbornly high still, even with falling cases. Does anyone have theories?

Trafford schools (and there are a lot of them) are pretty much fully open, there have only been a handful of schools with cases since half term and yet in that time, case rates have fallen from 400/100,000 to 120/100,000.

I think the thing to remember with where's in which tier, is that (with just a few exceptions) it's a countywide categorisation. Not district level. Which does make sense overall as there are a lot of district authorities that have wiggly borders with one another and where a lot of people cross between them for work and education. And you can see local examples, such as Kent, where an outbreak in one district (Swale) then spread to the neighbouring district (Medway). My mum was grumpy about her local authority being in tier 2 despite rates no higher than Cornwall, but the area next to her is much higher. Her area wouldn't stay low if all the people from the neighbouring area started going to the pubs in her area - many of which they could walk to.

@Mrex Could high positivity and falling cases be due to a lack of other flu type things going around and not many people testing before going on holiday at this time of year? Ie cases genuinely falling, and fewer people who don't have Covid being tested? There were also more reports of people nervously testing for minor symptoms or because of contact with a known case (even though you're not supposed to do so without symptoms) a couple of months back. And people have had fewer contacts of course since lockdown.

But wherever you draw the line, the districts on the outside of a county will be bordering other counties. I am 10 mins walk from Cheshire East and Warrington, and there are far more geographical links with those areas than with north Manchester eg the nearest state non-grammar school for most kids round here is in Lymm (Warrington) or Knutsford (Cheshire East), and there is a high attendance at the grammar schools from Cheshire and surrounds too. Lots of people come to Altrincham from Cheshire to get the tram or train into central Manchester (when not wfh). Dunham Massey is full of visitors from Merseyside. Altrincham is full of restaurants that are usually full of the Cheshire set.

Drawing a line at the county border isn’t always sensible.

@MRex
I am not saying it is all schools. Just in our area , which is rising, it looks like it may be currently a driver.

The argument that if it was schools it would be all areas could apply to any of the measures. So with lockdown all areas should fall the same proportions etc, and we can see that isn't the case.

With all areas things are different at a local level.
Then you have the matter of luck/situation.
So in area 1 the first case is symptomatic, comes out on Saturday and is tested, so on Monday all close contacts are sent home before they've been in contact with anyone else, is different from area 2 where the first case is asymptomatic, passes it to 3 people, only one of which is symptomatic. That also happened on a Wednesday and the close contacts weren't sent home until midday Friday when the positive test came through.

Exactly the same is true of the factories that have had issues-it hasn't been every factory that has caused an outbreak. But some of them have had bad outbreaks.

@ceeveebee Yes no lines are perfect - counties aren't islands. And they do seem to have tried to minimise the number of counties in different tiers to their neighbours (eg Dorset which is about the same rate as Cornwall, but much longer borders with other counties, or Lancashire, which appears to have been pulled in line with neighbours)

But there are statistically a lot less people who cross county borders for work or education than who cross district boundaries. Or who could walk to a pub in another county.

Thank you for the data. Interesting for Kent and perhaps supporting almost all of the county save Tunbridge Wells being in tier 3.

@Witchend. Cases are rising in just a very few areas of the country currently. That can't be primarily due to schools in those areas unless there is something very unusual about the schools in those areas that isn't the case in all the other areas where there are also schools that are largely open (ie everywhere) I know prisons were identified as a factor in Swale. I suspect other more uncommon local factors must be responsible for this small number of authorities not falling even when everywhere else is doing so.

Borders will always be problematic, look at Plymouth it is much closer to parts of Cornwall, tier 1, then it is to Teignbridge, tier 2. If Teignbridge needs to be tier 2 because of areas in Devon with higher numbers then surely parts of Cornwall do as well. Not to mention how many people in Cornwall work in Plymouth, shop in Plymouth, go to school in Plymouth.

@nosswith - We have family on both sides in that area, they're actually quite fine being Tier 3 while cases come down, to save the otherwise inevitable spread into their area. I suppose they might not be if it went on for many months (like e.g. Trafford).

@Firefliess - people getting better at targeting tests / fewer rhinoviruses and flu are both very optimistic explanations, yes.

At the beginning of all this I was asked to look into movement patterns. There was an acedemic publication that had already done that, and basically to split the country into chunks with most movement inside the chunk and little movement to outside the chunk, there were only about 6 or 7 regions. I guess that's why they need to go big. And country lines are well known boundaries

It would be interesting to know if that's changed since lockdown @midgebabe. I would guess that Surrey, Kent and Essex have fewer commuters going to and from London, but there could be variation based on job types.

@boys3 - thanks again for the graphs.

Can I ask where you get the data from re the positive rate of Pillar 2 tests for areas? I've been looking for this information for a while for my borough and can't find it.

No idea I'm afraid.m