New strain stuff.....

[MistressoftheDarkSide]

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/18/boris-johnson-calls-crisis-meeting-to-discuss-response-to-new-covid-strain

So,it's just a variant, nothing to see here, blah blah blah..... I'm pretty sanguine about this stuff but dropping this late at night as a headline right now..... I'm getting mightily pissed off with the uncertainty and the subtle fear mongering......

Any thoughts?

@em777 you should have it on the cases section, but it only appears when you filter to an English nation, region or LA.

if you click on this link which I have set to a random local authority hopefully you can see it?
coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=ltla&areaName=Havering

@Bluntness100

Interesting though that deaths have fallen for the second week running. And the biggest case increase is in kids, who are more susceptible to this but obvsiously contagious.

There is more going on with this variant than we yet know.

My concern is I don’t trust valence snd witty through out this they have been merchants of doom. Always presenting the very worst case scenario even when it’s abundantly clear what they are presenting is nigh on impossible. They have been called out on it so many times

So now I’m wondering if this is more of their fear mongering, or is it a case of the boy who cried Woolf.

Isn't the drop in deaths essentially what we would expect given the lower number of cases due to the most recent lockdown - just it takes a while for deaths to come through, as a lagging indicator?

@Bluntness100

Why another three or four weeks? It’s been about since September and it’s well over three weeks since the case spikes started?

It’s worth looking in to I agree.

Another factor is Christmas was seen to be an event where young and elderly mixed. It was higher risk. Take that away and higher infection rates in young have different impact.

[quote ceeveebee]@em777 you should have it on the cases section, but it only appears when you filter to an English nation, region or LA.

if you click on this link which I have set to a random local authority hopefully you can see it?
coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=ltla&areaName=Havering[/quote]
Thank you very much, that worked.

Yes, and the numbers just announced and a huge increase in deaths today. I wonder why. Is there a lag on the numbers or what’s the demographics behind it? Nearly seven hundred which is which is huge.

Bluntless Tuesday death figures are usually higher ( and Mondays lower) to reflect a weekend reporting lag.

They are still significantly higher than last Tuesday though

There’s often a bit of volatility in the death numbers. It’s down to when they are recorded and there’s a lag over weekends. The trend is generally up though, which obviously isn’t good.

hi folks - I have update the table of cases on the homepage of www.covidmessenger.com with todays data for anyone who wants to check cases / cases per 100K in their council. Or if you filter on the county column you can get a very quick snapshot of what is happening in all councils in your county (helpful as tiering decisions now seem to be county-wide in most cases).

I also added a new fixed header today so its super easy now to navigate on phone/ipad or desktop.

Tomorrow I am going to try to find time to add a percentage change week over week. I feel with this new strain and all the discussion about the increased transmission characteristics, that that will be helpful to see at both council level and across all councils in a county.

@littleowl1 Grateful subscriber here. Just a quick observation - I like the fixed header but today I can't see the whole table at once - I have to track left to right and back again. So if I want to see the column on the far right I lose the name of the area i'm looking at. I thought there was a ranking too, but may be imagining that!

Is there any way the table could be made just a bit smaller?

@FeelingBIue

What type of device are you viewing it on?

And yes I have removed the rank table as now you can rank on any column by just clicking it - it auto-ranks if you get what I mean.

electionmaps.uk/covid19-tier-map
Useful data here.

Btw, despite there 17% of cases being new covid in the north west, the respective local papers for Greater Manchester and Warrington both have reported that there are non of the new strain in either area.

This begs two questions:

1. Why the huge rise in cases in Trafford and Warrington? The Manchester Evening News reports that Trafford Council has put it down to increased socialising (This is T3 remember)
2. Where the hell is that 17% of cases if you take the populations of Greater Manchester and Warrington out of the equation.

If you have huge increases attributed to socialising in a T3 area, doesn't this suggest there is a complete breakdown in compliance? And how can you eliminate this elsewhere as a driver for huge increases in cases (rather than being down to a new strain).

Or are local officials in the NW being kept in the dark? Or the strain now fully being identified in the NW?

I must admit to now have some doubts creeping in about the accuracy of everything we've been told...

This article was very informative about how the new variant was discovered and why, although it has been around since September, it was only brought up as a problem in the last couple of weeks.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/22/new-coronavirus-variant-b117-transmitting

@littleowl1 - have sent a private message.

Its serious because by 4 January we are predicting twice the number of hospital admissions in London, South East and East of England with fewer staff.
Some of the tests are not picking up the new strain so harder to monitor nosocomial rates.
There are fewer staff available.
There is a political decision to maintain as much elective work as possible.
The risk is health are systems not coping.

Some of the tests are not picking up the new strain so harder to monitor nosocomial rates.

Can you say which tests are not picking it up?

I can’t find the source but it did reference the Danish mink which also had a protein spike

It’s going to be interesting to see if hospital cases fail to go up inline with infections. Anecdotally we seem to be hearing more mild infections. I guess time is going to tell.

@justanotherneighinparadise

It’s going to be interesting to see if hospital cases fail to go up inline with infections. Anecdotally we seem to be hearing more mild infections. I guess time is going to tell.

Up 17.8% on a rolling 7 day basis, so I'm not holding my breath that it'll prove lower.

Lag of around a week from testing positive to becoming ill enough to need admission.

Postive tests have been very high in last few days

Some posters are saying that some tests don't pick up the new variant. I've searched and searched and I can't find any evidence that says this is definitely the case. Has anyone else seen anything definitive?

I appreciate that it is possible that it may not show in all tests but I was under the impression that the actual situation is still to be ascertained?

@Chaotic45

Some posters are saying that some tests don't pick up the new variant. I've searched and searched and I can't find any evidence that says this is definitely the case. Has anyone else seen anything definitive?

I appreciate that it is possible that it may not show in all tests but I was under the impression that the actual situation is still to be ascertained?

It seems unlikely, if nothing else, how have we picked up so many cases.

They have to pick them up on tests to be able to see it's the new variant.

If they fail to (more than the old variant, which also is failed to pick up a certain amount of time) then it would imply that the new variant has even higher numbers, so is even more transmissible. This seems unlikely to me.

@RedToothBrush

electionmaps.uk/covid19-tier-map Useful data here.

Btw, despite there 17% of cases being new covid in the north west, the respective local papers for Greater Manchester and Warrington both have reported that there are non of the new strain in either area.

This begs two questions:

1. Why the huge rise in cases in Trafford and Warrington? The Manchester Evening News reports that Trafford Council has put it down to increased socialising (This is T3 remember)
2. Where the hell is that 17% of cases if you take the populations of Greater Manchester and Warrington out of the equation.

If you have huge increases attributed to socialising in a T3 area, doesn't this suggest there is a complete breakdown in compliance? And how can you eliminate this elsewhere as a driver for huge increases in cases (rather than being down to a new strain).

Or are local officials in the NW being kept in the dark? Or the strain now fully being identified in the NW?

I must admit to now have some doubts creeping in about the accuracy of everything we've been told...

Agree it seems odd.

Also take a look at Liverpool. Rates to 17 December were up 50% week on week to 140. 173 cases reported today in a single day which I know does not all relate to one day but that’s a massive spike. If you calculate their rate to 20 December (of which the last 3 days are far from complete) it is at least 70% up week on week

And similar trend in Cheshire East.

@Chaotic45

Some posters are saying that some tests don't pick up the new variant. I've searched and searched and I can't find any evidence that says this is definitely the case. Has anyone else seen anything definitive?

I appreciate that it is possible that it may not show in all tests but I was under the impression that the actual situation is still to be ascertained?

I definitely read somewhere that only tests processed in lighthouse labs are able to pick them up. And a significant proportion of tests are not processed in lighthouse labs.

www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/21/new-covid-strain-six-key-questions-answered

“One of the mutations in the new variant affects one of three genomic targets used by some PCR tests. This means that in those tests, that target area, or “channel”, would come up negative”