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

@boys3 - thank you. Knowing the location of those LAs (it's my patch) it's a very clear geographic pattern of it spreading up and east from Essex.

This isn't something I can evidence, but I'm hearing worried noises from my hospital colleagues about how few ITU beds remain across East Anglia. Large numbers of patients being transferred here from Essex ITUs, too.

It's all getting quite scary.

Anyone any thoughts on the geographical pattern of the spread ? Why so far East ?

@peridito They think the new variant started in Kent. Probably north Kent, and spread into London and Essex from there.

Shit. So he is talking about when we were only doing hospital testing....

So we now have similar levels to that in the community.

But hang on, they’re not in hospital, so is it milder now?

If you look at the maps, it's spreading out a bit like ink on blotting paper, centred on Dartford.

So Babergh has it badly, because the main town - Sudbury - is right on the border with Essex, and on a direct road to Halstead, which is in Braintree LA, and which was very badly effected pre-Christmas.

I suspect there's an element, also, that up til now we've got off lightly. So low levels of immunity and a certain amount of complacency. Up til third week December I was hearing, "Of course it's bad everywhere else, but not here..."

@everythingthelighttouches

Shit. So he is talking about when we were only doing hospital testing....

So we now have similar levels to that in the community.

But hang on, they’re not in hospital, so is it milder now?

No he's talking about rate at which tests come back positive. Nothing to do with how ill people are with it.

The positivity rate just isn't a useful way to compare things now and I'm the spring @everything. Because we were testing completely different groups of people (people being admitted to hospital with symptoms, as opposed to people in the community with symptoms) We don't know how many people had mild Covid in the spring because we weren't testing them. (Though when we later did antibody testing we were able to estimate numbers at around 6-10%, presumably over about 3 months)

Thank you January and Firefliess

I’m probably not being very clear.

If in March, we were only testing (presumably quite unwell people) with covid symptoms in hospital, then for the same severity of disease , I would expect that positivity rate to be higher than it is now.

That is because I assume the chances of picking up positive cases are higher if the person is displaying symptoms, than in a mass testing scenario where people have a lower burden of disease, are also being tested if they are contacts or if they are prospectively testing themselves (which some people do).

Therefore, I am wondering if there are more asymptomatic and mild cases now.

Perhaps my assumption is wrong though.

Am surprised at Burn-Murdoch saying this then....

"But hang on, they’re not in hospital, so is it milder now?"

I think there is a point there but I'm still grasping for it precisely. Basically, not all 'positive tests' mean the same thing for the person who tests positive.

Re the March positivity rate, the March 'positive tests' would all have been people who were ill enough to be in hospital (if this is the point in March when testing became hospital only) - ie very ill. While many of the people testing positive in December are not ill enough to be in hospital (or ill at all if they are the asymptomatic people testing positive - would be interesting to know what percentage that is btw but that is a separate question).

So yes, we are not comparing like with like - in several ways.

Sorry I still don't understand you I'm afraid

If in March, we were only testing (presumably quite unwell people) with covid symptoms in hospital, then for the same severity of disease , I would expect that positivity rate to be higher than it is now.

Why would this be? Wouldn't it be the same.?

@boys3 was going to separate out pillar 1 and 2 results, that will then allow you to look at rates amongst hospitalised cases though. Which might be a little lower because threshold for admission has gone down since March.

From John Burn- Murdock's Twitter, aside from the positivity, what I find scary is that Covid patients occupy 63% of beds in North Middlesex hospital and is hitting 50% in others.

Am waiting for a new announcement tomorrow, from the Scottish Govt on tighter restrictions here.

And once again i have cross posted!

So yes we have the same positivity rate as in march, but the composition of positive tests is different - some now represent mildly ill and asymptomatic people, whereas in March they all represented fairly-seriously ill people. If there had been a sample of the population tested in march that matched the composition of people being tested now (ill, not very ill, and not ill at all), I wonder what the positivity rates would have been? We may never know because I don't think random samples had been set up by March.

january

Because you’re more likely to catch positive cases if the only people you’re testing are sick with covid symptoms, that if you’re testing more generally (as we are now).

You’ve sort of just said the same thing yourself.

“ Why would this be? Wouldn't it be the same.?”

“ Which might be a little lower because threshold for admission has gone down since March.”

Aixenprovence

In that case my assumption would be wrong. Which is also what January is asking “why wouldn’t it be the same”

So then we’re saying that the same two people can have exactly the same viral load and one be asymptomatic and the other be really quite ill.

I thought viral load was a major contributing factor to how ill people get?

Sorry, I’m derailing is off data and onto biology.

"So then we’re saying that the same two people can have exactly the same viral load and one be asymptomatic and the other be really quite ill."

I wasn't really thinking about viral load - more that presumably there were always (including in March) mildly ill and asymptomatic people as well as the very ill. So the fact that we have more positive results per 100 tested (positivity rate) than in march would not necessarily mean we would have more seriously ill people, because we are now testing a much wider range of positive people. (Although I think I read that admissions are higher than in April, so not sure how that theory works out in practice!)

Biology is data surely! so I would have thought fine to mention it on this thread! Yes I think they think it is important in determining how ill you get - though other factors such as age may be more so?

Back to the 29th data ‘blip’ - the numbers for the Northern England look a lot less like it’s a blip than Southern England. Is it that North England has huge growth (very possibly) , or is it that there is significant testing lag in the South and we are going to see big numbers over the next few days?

UK by specimen date has now reached over 80,000 for the 29th - with likely figures to slightly increase again as Scotland/N Ireland release specimen data tomorrow.

Attached graphs above are from the (ever excellent) rp131 Twitter feed.

.

Christina Chirp’s theory about the 29th is that it’s the first day that those mixing on Christmas Day would have started to have symptoms. Which would certainly seem to match with the big jumps in the North for that day. I don’t think it’s to do with increased testing as I think overall testing was down

Really stark hospitalisation figures, the last column is increases in a single day

@MRex

I agree some parts of Kent seem to have cases dropping, but it's at MSOA level and there's some counterbalance of increases in other areas. Looking across the London MSOAs, there are ups and downs; some early peak areas have more stable cases and areas only just hit in Surrey still rising, but overall I'd say case direction is looking deprivation dependent. If the new variant wave hit a few weeks ago and it's a wealthier area, then the rate of increase and even case numbers look to be dropping. If it's an area known for higher deprivation and particularly blocks of flats, then cases are still rising. I am concerned the increased transmissibility will actually increase the deprivation impact; working out of the home and higher density housing being the most obvious factors. It's looking particularly terrible in East London, the crappiest parts of Croydon etc. Could even flats themselves have a bigger impact (sharing lifts / stairwells) with this variant?

Merton which is quite affluent had been going going up in tandem with Croydon for a week or two (cases per 100k almost identical each day). The latest day actually has Merton pulling out in front.

@Dinasaur That sounds right to my - I think the time lag between catching it at Christmas and getting symptoms is the likely explanation. And you wouldn't expect it to be a one day blip of that is the case - you'd expect to see a couple more days with similar rates - as we can already start to see in the north of England (thanks @lofty) Only after that will we be able to see any kind of impact from the new tier restrictions.

@QueenStromba - I was reviewing at an MSOA level not borough level; Merton is actually a great example. Cases are falling in some MSOA but increases are still being driven by places like St Heliers North, which is certainly a deprived area. You can see indices of deprivation here to compare with case rates:
data.merton.gov.uk/deprivation/map/.

@MRex - Wandsworth is also a good example of this - Putney common area noticeably lower than Westhill for example ( although the odd area that doesn’t make sense)