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

Slight lag in England given the spec dates for the numbers reported today

7 Jan. 3366

6 Jan. 21435

5 Jan. 16821 , taking total to 43,631

4 Jan 16006, as compared to 14868 added yesterday taking total to 65636, so not far off the 29 Dec total of 72,311. 4th of course was the first working day after new year.

I think we've found the missing data from yesterday's low numbers.

I think that's also the highest daily number of deaths since it began. On the basis numbers are rising this does not look hopeful.

"Testing is massively up, though. 619,941 tests processed yesterday vs the latest 7 day average of 425,064."

Yes, tests in the 7 day period to 7 January actually increased slightly (32.6%) more than positive results in the 7 day period to 8 Jan (29.9%). So I don't think this headline figure can be taken as evidence of an increase in cases in the last day or two can it? - though I know there are issues about matching specimen date to test date, so this is all quite rough and ready. I wonder if any of the news reports are pointing this out?

Okay my post yesterday about 4 Jan was a little premature it seems. It’s looking close to the 29 Dec figure now, but hopefully won’t beat it. Really hoping this is the start of a plateau.... we can’t cope with any more increases....

Table of cases in every council in England is now updated with today's data on the www.covidmessenger.com homepage.

As always, the data is for test samples 5 days ago (Jan 3rd) as it takes 5 days for the bulk of results to reported. Note that Jan 3 was a Sunday so there is a dip in positive cases reported as is typical (less tests taken over the weekend in general).

I also thought it would be timely to look at Kent councils in isolation through December. As Kent was one of the first counties to have high prevalence of the new variant, perhaps we can gain insights into the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of various social restrictions on this new variant. I knocked it together pretty quickly today as I dont have a whole lot of time with homeschooling so it is not as in depth as I would like, but nonetheless.

You can see it here: www.covidmessenger.com/latest-analysis/

And I have also linked to it on the main page menu as "Latest Analysis"

Well my very low Tier 2 MSOA (then tier 3 until lockdown) is now darkest shade.

13th Dec, so not even a month ago we were under 100 per 100k.

We've still not had 4th Jan added on.

From excess deaths perspective:
mobile.twitter.com/ChrisGiles_/status/1347579076685524993

Can anyone remember (or ideally link to) the article that compared the effectiveness of delaying both the Oxford and Pfizer vaccines? My memory is that the first dose of the Oxford one had increasing preventative capability up to 12 weeks (which was the longest they measured) and that the Pfizer one had not been measured other than for 3 weeks so it was unknown - but I can’t find it via google or searching this thread.

@TeaInTheGarden

Having completed the Kent analysis today, I don't think we are going to plateau nationally yet. I hope I am wrong. But I can't see things plateauing until latter half of Jan at the very earliest. And frankly, it could be a lot later.

I really hope I am wrong. And I could be. It is very hard to draw firm conclusions over the holiday period as there has been a lot of noise in the data with public holidays, case reporting delays and people generally not behaving "as normal" - for example, it is hard to know if people did meet family over Xmas discreetly or did they comply with restrictions? It's incredibly hard to get a handle on it during such a non-typical time of year.

I truly hope I am wrong. The Kent analysis shook me a bit. I really would have expected a better improvement in daily cases, all things considered. But perhaps I just can't see it because of the "holiday noise" and it will become apparent next week. Here's hoping.....

My small town has jumped from 153 to 451/100,000 in a week.

Starkly worrying.

Zoe app estimates of cases are plateauing and even slightly dropped today. So there may be some hope!

Positivity rate in England is, at least, not obviously increasing to 3 Jan. The same is true in London I think (fell slightly in both, though no idea whether that would be statistically significant/reliable - would rather doubt it!).

Talking about England because I don't think they do a UK graph on the dashboard, and couldn't find an equivalent figure for Scotland, Wales and NI.

@littleowl1 thank you for the reply, I agree it’s so hard to see with all the holidays mixed in. Annoying timing like you say.
Hoping for a plateau soon.... 😫

Will be interesting once the effects of the vaccine start to appear. Although will make it hard to know if effects are from lockdown or the vaccine...! But as long as things start going down I will be happy.

In the meantime let’s hope the increases start to slow at least.

I just had a look on government website and this is the 7 day average graph for central beds, this at least shows the scary exponential growth is slowing here.

Data vis showing spread of new variant ( B.1.1.7 ) in England, from early November to just before Christmas:
mobile.twitter.com/theosanderson/status/1347578813979488259

I am still not sure why so many twitterers and news reporters report the absolute daily figure for positive results without mentioning the issue of whether tests have increased (or, on occasion, decreased). What am I missing - am I wrong that that is quite important? (willing to learn!)

It may be worth remembering that whilst the five day lag for full reporting is broadly sensible in normal times when there is a fast rising trajectory it will provide a lower figure than reality. Although cases for day -4 will indeed not have been fully reported the trajectory is such that the rate in day -4 will already be higher than day -5, and is only going to move one way (higher again) as further cases get reported through.

These for example are the Essex rates based on standard five day lag, and then 4 days

Basildon 1314 and 1323

Braintree 1117 and 1157

Brentwood 1355 and 1370

Castle Point 1426 and 1443

Chelmsford 1063 and 1107

Colchester 897 and 997

Epping Forest 1461 and 1515

Harlow 1395 and 1521

Maldon 1041 and 1087

Rochford 1039 and 1047

Tendring 987 and 1182

Uttlesford 865 and 922

Then looking at some of the regions

London 1040 and 1100

East of England 800 and 847

Whilst I’m not advocating a move away from five days, I would suggest being fully aware of what a sharply increasing trajectory can lead to even with cases not being fully reported through.

What is the expected hospitalisation lag time these days? I mean, how many days post symptoms is typical before going into hospital? I can't find anything recent. Thanks

@MRex not hugely current but this is one of several papers and I can imagine from this how complicated a question that may be do answer in terms of something we can apply to the current situation www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7589278/

I am still not sure why so many twitterers and news reporters report the absolute daily figure for positive results without mentioning the issue of whether tests have increased

I'm not sure whether that is really as much of an issue as you think. It's more the positivity amount that would be relevant.
If there are more people with symptoms, especially if they've been in contact with a positive case, then you will expect more tests to be needed to be done.
So you would expect tests to increase when more people are positive.

Also the general public seems to be pretty statistics illiterate, so if you start confusing things by saying "X positives and Y tests" they'll not be able to tell the difference between:
Yesterday: 100k tests and 10k (10%) positivity
200k tests and 20k (10%) positivity
200k tests and 30k (15%) positivity
200k tests and 10k (5%) positivity
Looks fairly easy to work out if you're reasonable at maths. But the numbers are more likely to be 426 382 tests and 52 438 positives. Now as a mathematician I would fairly quickly go to 425k/50k: tests/positives approximation, but the general public wouldn't.

But it also isn't that simple. You see the number of cases today isn't from today's tests. Or even simply from yesterday. You have about 5 days worth of tests. One might be a low data day, one might be the highest ever... so you can't split it that easily.

Looking at the number of cases from specimen date would work, but then you're looking at a lag of 5 days, which when things are moving so quickly can feel too far away.

ONS report on social attitudes to SD, vaccination etc out (article containing link in BBC website), gives figures for how many mixed at Christmas, also how many say they won't have the jab - 7% (of the mainly conformist types who are happy to be interviewed by a govt body).

From the ONS survey, most recent figures
during the most recent week (27 December 2020 to 2 January 2021), we estimate 1,122,000 people (95% credible interval: 1,070,600 to 1,175,700) within the community population in England had the coronavirus (COVID-19),

so that works out at about 160k per day getting infected.

That is the figure to be concerned about, that was the real rate of infection.

@littleowl1

Table of cases in every council in England is now updated with today's data on the www.covidmessenger.com homepage.

As always, the data is for test samples 5 days ago (Jan 3rd) as it takes 5 days for the bulk of results to reported. Note that Jan 3 was a Sunday so there is a dip in positive cases reported as is typical (less tests taken over the weekend in general).

I also thought it would be timely to look at Kent councils in isolation through December. As Kent was one of the first counties to have high prevalence of the new variant, perhaps we can gain insights into the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of various social restrictions on this new variant. I knocked it together pretty quickly today as I dont have a whole lot of time with homeschooling so it is not as in depth as I would like, but nonetheless.

You can see it here: www.covidmessenger.com/latest-analysis/

And I have also linked to it on the main page menu as "Latest Analysis"

Thank you Little Owl. I live in the second highest in Kent, it's really worrying how at the moment there seems to be no slowing down.

I think reality might finally be dawning on people in my neck of the woods. Last weekend there was a birthday party with 15 children from one of my children’s classes in attendance at a soft play centre (legally open in tier 3 at that point). We didn’t go I hasten to add! Today over 1300 cases per 100k in the MSOA and a lot of worried messages on the local chat. I wish people could get better at reacting before it got so bad

A tangent but, did anyone listen to the latest How to Vaccinate the World podcast interviewing Larry Brilliant? I think he was taking about a historically game changing method of basically vaccinating the circle of contacts around a person infected with smallpox because the vaccine had a prophylactic effect post exposure. Has anyone seen any research around this for the covid vaccines? If there was such a vaccine effect, I feel now would be the time to use it. In line with contact tracing it could be impactful. Is any study ongoing I wonder?

Wow @littleowl1 that Kent analysis is scary. I thought we were starting to see a plateau but the table suggests not