Daily stats, numbers, data thread 02 Jan

[PatriciaHolm]

UK govt pressers Slides & data www.gov.uk/government/collections/slides-and-datasets-to-accompany-coronavirus-press-conferences#history
R estimates UK & English regions www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk
Imperial UK weekly LAs, cases / 100k, table, map, hotspots [[imperialcollegelondon.github.io/covid19local/#table
School statistics Attendance explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak]]
NHS England Hospital activity www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/
NHs England Daily deaths www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/
Cases Tracker England Local Government lginform.local.gov.uk/reports/view/lga-research/covid-19-case-tracker
ONS MSAO Map English deaths www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/
CovidMessenger live update by council district in England www.covidmessenger.com/
Scot gov Daily data www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/
Scotland TravellingTabby LAs, care homes, hospitals, tests, t&t www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/
PH Wales LAs, tests, ONS deaths Dashboard app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiZGYxNjYzNmUtOTlmZS00ODAxLWE1YTEtMjA0NjZhMzlmN2JmIiwidCI6IjljOWEzMGRlLWQ4ZDctNGFhNC05NjAwLTRiZTc2MjVmZjZjNSIsImMiOjh9
ICNRC Intensive Care National Audit & Research reports www.icnarc.org/Our-Audit/Audits/Cmp/Reports
NHS t&t England & UK testing Weekly stats www.gov.uk/government/collections/nhs-test-and-trace-statistics-england-weekly-reports
PHE Surveillance reports & LA Local Watchlist Maps by LSOA www.gov.uk/government/collections/nhs-test-and-trace-statistics-england-weekly-reports
ONS England infection surveillance report each Friday www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/previousReleases
Datasets for ONS surveillance reports www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/datasets/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveydata/2020
ONS Roundup deaths, infections & economic reports www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19roundup/2020-03-26
Zoe Uk data covid.joinzoe.com/data#interactive-map
ECDC rolling 14-day incidence EEA & UK read https_www.ecdc.europa.eu/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ecdc.europa.eu%2Fen%2Fcases-2019-ncov-eueea
Worldometer UK page www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
Our World in Data GB test positivity etc, DIY country graphs ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/united-kingdom?country=~GBR
FT DIY graphs compare deaths, cases, raw / million pop ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=gbr&areas=fra&areas=esp&areas=ita&areas=deu&areas=swe&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usnj&byDate=1&cumulative=1&logScale=1&per100K=1&values=deaths
Alama Personal COVID risk assessment alama.org.uk/covid-19-medical-risk-assessment/
Local Mobility Reports for countries www.google.com/covid19/mobility/
UK Highstreet Tracker for cities & large towns Footfall, spend index, workers, visitors, economic recovery www.centreforcities.org/data/high-streets-recovery-tracker/

⏭ Our STUDIES Corner ⏮www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3869571-Studies-corner?msgid=99913434

We welcome factual, data driven and analytical contributions
Please try to keep discussion focused on these

I wonder what percentage of the living population of the UK have had the virus then? I was estimating from population number 66.65 million and 'official' positive cases so far 2.77m approx 4%, but obviously loads more could have had it without a positive test.

Anyone got any sources for any data on vaccinations carried out? Can I ask where that Johnson quote is from, eyewhisker?

(Just seen it on the news, so ignore my question, eyewhisker!)

@Quarantino
we will never know.

Sorry this is not a data question but everyone is v clever here .

Previously I had read that the reason we had such strongly transmissible mutation was in part due to the virus running so fast through society (I know all viruses mutate). So I took from that that as soon as we get the case numbers down, we could expect less mutations.

Then Vallance just said that as we crack down and limit the virus, we can expect it to mutate ?

Can anyone explain why it mutates in both these scenarios?

I wish the scientists would stop talking about it like an intelligent life form. I know it’s not but it still makes me twitch ...

He was reassuring about how easy the vaccine should be to adapt quickly just in case my post alarms anyone

Yes @tootyfruitypickle I was confused by him saying that as well. I think basically it'll do whatever it can to survive!

Tooty good question will let someone answer it better than I can but interested too

not caught up but just wanted to say a big thank you to @MRex for being so kind and helpful

peridito - sorry, I sometimes get carried away replying to a specific person and forget others are reading who obviously won't have read the reports we're supposedly summarising. I'll try to make more effort to explain what something is if I'm linking a report. (Out of context, I wouldn't have immediately known the acronym either!) I think it's better for everyone to ask for clarification if a post is missing something, so thank you.

I am wondering how babies will be impacted by the changes related to the long lockdown. Especially those expecting child and parenting infants, how do you think the cohort of 2020-21 will be affected? We're researchers at Cambridge trying to understand exactly this to inform child care and maternal health policy. Anonymously completea 15-20 min online survey on the impact of the pandemic on your life as a parent. Thank you for your willingness to share your experiences and please, would be so appreciated if you could share the link and more info about the survey with other new and expecting moms - we can use all the help we can get to unpack these issues.

@QueenStromba - it was in an FT article that I now unfortunately can’t find the link to ( could even be one I clicked on from this thread I think). But the reason I noticed it in the FT article is because I’d also been told this via a friend senior in NhS ( appreciate I could be making this up for all you know! Hence mentioning FT article).

@tootyfruitypickle
Basically the virus mutates due to pressure from it's own unsuccessful reproduction when cases/transmission is low; if fewer people are infected from the typical strain, the mutated form which is more successful becomes the most dominant. Until people are vaccinated, it is possible that the virus might continue to mutate for it's own sinister reproduction. And let me tell you, reproduction does not require much intelligence! ;) (in response to the other user who said it seems like an intelligent life form - slime molds are waaay smarter than viruses) x scimum

tootyfruitypickle

The vaccines work by telling our body to recognise specific parts of the virus. If the mutations come about in the right places, it is like the virus is in disguise!

The mutations you refer to come from two closely related but slight different mechanisms.
1)
When a virus infects someone it has to make copies of itself to spread through their body. As it does this, it makes errors in copying it’s code. It does this all the time and usually it doesn’t come to anything, but sometimes, randomly, lead to advantageous mutations which mean that “new version” will then propagate more.

When a virus “rips through” a population it is like putting the copying process on fast forward and you are more likely to see mutations.

With regard to the vaccine (and indeed natural immunity from getting the virus) it is called evolutionary pressure. This means that the mutations which are advantageous for the virus will be the ones which prevent the vaccine from working so well and allow the virus to ”escape”.

You would see this in people from natural immunity from catching the virus but what we are hoping to achieve with vaccination, is generating immunity in a lot more people a lot more quickly. So it is like putting that evolutionary pressure on fast forward.

Running late today. Apologies!

The table of councils is now updated on www.covidmessenger.com with today's data.

I had a go at estimating the proportion of the UK population who've had Covid based on adding up the numbers in the ONS infection surveys to date - it comes to around 12% of the population. But the survey only started in the summer so we need to add on estimates for the first wave. I did this by looking at hospital admissions in both waves. In the first wave there was 130,000 hospital admissions. Interestingly, we're now at exactly twice that number - which suggests that a similar number caught it in the first wave to have caught it in the second wave (thus far...) The improvements in medical care affect people already in hospital - there's nothing routinely offered to help people avoid hospital, so I think it's not unreasonable to estimate that if the hospital admissions are the same then the overall numbers infected are also close. So that would give a total figure of 24% of the population having had Covid. 24% of 66m = 16,000 people. You can check this estimate by looking at death rates. 76,000 have died so that's a death rate of 0.48% which is pretty much bang most estimates, so I think this is a good estimate. How it varies between areas is really interesting though - there are some LAs where detected cases is more than twice the national average, so you'd estimate around 50% having had Covid in those - which may well explain the slowdown in numbers in some parts of London and Kent. If we do end up with herd immunity rather than vaccine rollout being the route out of all this, you do wonder whether all the sacrifices and economic mess will have been worth it though :(

Good gosh, thank you very much firefliess!

I can't remember where I saw it but an article was doing the rounds - possibly the Lancet - saying how you can't get herd immunity naturally; you need vaccination. I meant to pin it to read it but clearly never did.

If we'd just let rip at the start then hospitals would have run out of beds and the death rate would have skyrocketed.

That's assuming nobody caught it twice. We can never know how many of the untested "probably Covid" cases have lost their initial immunity over the months, but there will be a proportion of early cases that are becoming susceptible to the new variant due to waning immunity so the maths is not as simple as it looks at first sight.

@Quarantino The question of whether you can get herd immunity naturally or not depends on what you mean by herd immunity. If you want to completely irradiate a disease you need vaccination, to ensure people become immune at a young age without infecting others - as has been achieved with smallpox and nearly achieves with polio. But you can get a level of herd immunity that keeps infections down to low and manageable levels as we have with chickenpox. And with those kind of levels it's possible for someone who's not immune to go for years without catching it

@Inmysparetime. Yes that is one issue with my calculations, though I do think the evidence is that it's quite low numbers infected twice.

@Queen - well that is true. The death rate would indeed have been much higher if we hadn't done something to stop the natural rate of rise during the spring or currently.

Smaller regrets:

1. I wish I'd been organised enough to get an appointment to have my hair cut before Christmas -'ah, I'll do it in January, I thought'
2. I really wish I'd washed my mug up before leaving work on that day in March before work announced that we would work from home 'for a few weeks', and I really wish I'd grabbed my aeropress out of my desk drawer...

Whoops, this is very much the wrong thread for that post - sorry everyone!

re:mutations

There's also a factor that immunocompromised people might accelerate a mutation. It was in a bmj article, but no link, sorry

[quote Firefliess]@Inmysparetime. Yes that is one issue with my calculations, though I do think the evidence is that it's quite low numbers infected twice. [/quote]
I don't think we can reach any conclusion on people infected twice yet.

Partially because so few people were tested relatively before May time, secondly because to my knowledge, they've only counted as infected twice if they have sequenced it and found it a different sequence, and they weren't doing that to all people (I think I saw 1 in 10 quoted, but not sure where that came from).

Be just been looking at the summary data and if the average time between diagnosis and death is 3 weeks then today's death figures arise from a case rate of approx 35k. Today's is 60k plus.