Data, Stats & Daily Numbers started 20th Jan

[TheSunIsStillShining]

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 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

But Regalus - the data they present is only for the first dose. The second dose isn’t given until day 21 and then takes 10 days to kick in. So all the ‘good news’ is for the first dose.

There is a separate question as to how long the protection lasts. The 21 day schedule is done from an abundance of caution based on what has been tested. The trial data has some data for up to 6 weeks, where there is no reduction in efficacy, so the WHO is happy to approve a 6 week gap. But that does not mean that efficacy stops at 6 weeks, nor that a 3 or 6 week gap is optimal.

@everythingthelighttouchesn thanks for the heads up. It’s round about 16 minutes on the today programme which is on BBC Sounds. The guy they interviewed (didn’t catch his name) made some good points about firstly, the risk changing significantly according to age. Risk to over 90s obviously now much higher BUT they are being vaccinated which will counteract the risk. Increased risk to younger ages becomes negligible when you get down to those in their twenties.

@Regulus

Msloverlover it was David Spiegelhalter - who I always find so helpful to listen to ( and is very good at expressing things clearly and coherently)

@littlestpogo that is a very excellent surname. He sounded like a nice bloke.

AI to identify those most at risk from covid: "Maccabi, Medial EarlySign develop algorithm to identify high-risk COVID-19 cases | The Times of Israel" www.timesofisrael.com/maccabi-medial-earlysign-develop-algorithm-to-identify-high-risk-covid-19-cases/amp/.
Am I misunderstanding or is this what the NHS did last March/April to generate shielding letters? Have other countries not had a concept of increased clinical vulnerability?

@peridito

Cheering news about Israel .

@ancientgran yes you can send a text to a landline ,might help with notifications .

Thanks for confirming, I was beginning to wonder if I had imagined it. So sending a text to a landline would work.

I've been pondering about those charts we were looking at earlier that appeared to show rates of the new variant falling faster than the old one in London/East/SE. This is certainly a puzzle! But it could be because regional figures reflect the combined effect of different things happening in different areas/populations within them. The areas that had the most new variant cases were also those where the total case rates became very high indeed and so fell fast because lockdown coincided with a natural peak due to herd immunity starting to be reached, at least among the people most exposed (keyworkers, etc), whereas the old virus was predominantly circulating in the areas with lower case rates, so neither strain has fallen fast in these areas.

To illustrate this with some numbers: Area 1 had 1000 new variant cases and 100 old variant cases in December. It's infected lots of people by now including most keyworkers, so by January the figures are now 500 new variant and 50 old variant (50% drop for both). Area B had 50 new variant and 200 new variant cases in December. Only a few people here have had Covid so rates don't fall much so by January they have 45 new variant and 180 old variant (10% drop for both). If you add these two areas together you'd show new variant cases dropping from 1050 to 545 (48% drop) but old variant cases dropping from 300 to 230 (23% drop) So looked at at a larger spatial scale we can see new variant cases falling faster, even though both variants are actually falling at exactly the same rate in each of these two (made up) areas.

This theory would also explain why we only see the new variant falling fastest in these three regions - they were the only ones that had parts of them see the very high new variant case rates

Thanks for the explanation of biological terms @everything btw. It's helpful to understand both what they mean and how they are commonly misused. I can do statistics, but biology is not really my thing.

@Quarantino

I think I asked this months ago but would be interested in people's point of view. Does anyone think that it's basically inevitable that an under-50, not shielding but being fairly careful, in the UK will get covid at some point?

Cases have been so high that frankly I'm still amazed there are people left to infect, but that's because I'm terrible at imagining the scale of large numbers let alone the 67m people in the UK.

We are in the fortunate position that both DH and I able to wfh (with employers who want to stick by the rules), homeschooling the DCs and have shopping delivered. I’ve only been out for runs or walks since 18th December, not been in a shop or cafe and not seen anyone outside of the household since Christmas Day when we had the grandparents over. So at the moment - yes - but when the DCs go back to school - probably not

Answered the wrong way round there -I meant, at the moment we can avoid it.

Fireflies Whilst your hypothesis does fit, I'm just not convinced that there's enough regionality within regions to really get that impact is there? Whilst I could see it Kent with regional population London is surely too interconnected to have that much difference. It would have needed London boroughs with significantly lower rates than adjacent ones to be the "old variant" areas wouldn't you? But we saw all areas of London having similarly large levels.

It's an interesting question whether a healthy under 50 is more likely to catch the virus or get vaccinated first. Looking at the numbers, we're now at around 400,000 vaccinations a day and around 100,000 catching Covid a day, so if both of those remain the same an "average person" would be 4 times as likely to be vaccinated first. But in reality, your risk of catching it varies hugely depending on working outside the home, who you live with, and of course whether you've had it already, and vaccinations we know are not given out by chance, but in a priority order. Healthy under 50s know from the start we're in the bottom half of this list - but don't as yet know where about in this bottom half. On top of that, it's likely that infection rates will fall in the coming weeks, as the government has made it clear we'll remain in lockdown until they do, and vaccination rates may rise or fall depending on supply, and will of course slow down once they start doing second doses. So a few too many unknowns to really calculate I think!

@sirfred Yes you're right that it's harder to see London as having quite the same variety as the other two regions. I did wonder about that. The new variant did spread into East London first though, so there was some variation. And in addition to variation between boroughs (that we can see in the data) there may also have been some harder-to-measure variation between more localised neighbourhoods and social groups.

I can't come up with a better theory for what is otherwise very odd data. And I think when charts with curves look "wrong" the answer can often be two things at once being mixed up in the data - the same way we were all puzzling about why cases started rising again in London before the end of the November lockdown - once they split the data into old and new strain you could instantly see what was going on with the two curves on top of each other. But happy to consider alternative explanations!

Does anyone think that it's basically inevitable that an under-50, not shielding but being fairly careful, in the UK will get covid at some point?

No, I do not think it is inevitable. I think people have got different degrees of susceptibility to COVID and while nearly everyone would probably get infected if they spent hours in the COVID ward, many of us might be more resistant to transmissions in less risky settings (e.g. in shops or public transport).

I live in a London borough with high cases. I commute to work four or five days a week using public transport. I regularly pop to shops or supermarkets on the way home. I get takeaways for lunch. DH and I regularly take DD to parks and playgrounds (and yes, playgrounds do get busy). DD goes to nursery.

To the best of my knowledge, I have not had COVID. I get regularly tested at work (just because I would hate to be that parent who might bring the virus to DD's nursery class). All the tests so far have been negative.

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/22/data-on-covid-infections-in-england-suggests-cautious-approach-best Very data-focussed Guardian article advocating caution.

This doesn't surprise me, rates won't fall so fast with so many at work, lots in schools and nurseries open. R is close to 1, hospitals are full, we are on a knife edge.

My area rate is going up again now, having come down for the last couple of weeks.

@Firefliess
mobile.twitter.com/theosanderson/status/1352669515583279105

Thanks @Coffee. So from that thread that there's some concern that measures cases which are "new virus compatible" may not be as clear cut as we'd like. I'm a bit lost on the biology tbh, but not measuring what you think you're measuring is also a potential explanation of the odd graphs.

@teta

My area rate is going up again now, having come down for the last couple of weeks.

Same in my borough. The decrease had slowed down a lot by this week, Thursday positives were the same as Wednesdays and yesterdays rose by 14%, so i'm cautious about the figures too.

Firefliess and coffeeandcroissants,
I’d read that thread too. Really interesting, I didn’t know about what is being counted.

It basically says that although we are using the s-gene drop out from the PCR as a proxy for the new variant (the new variant uniquely has a deletion at 69/70 which means that sequence can’t be amplified), there are actually random drop outs all the time.

So just because there is an S-Gene drop out, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is the new variant.

We’re also only counting the single drop out as a proxy for the new variant , when in fact, it could also sometimes show as having the other genes drop out too.

However, if the random drop outs are truly random, then I would expect the effect to be the same on all variants.

I don’t know what we’ll do if another variant takes off here, we’re incredibly lucky the “U.K. -discovered variant” just so happens to have this property.

If I were Boris, I’d be spending massive amounts of money to extend our U.K. genomics sequencing capability right now.

@teta

My area rate is going up again now, having come down for the last couple of weeks.

Mine too.

Article from Der Spiegel with eminent virologist on lifting lockdown over spring and summer and strategies for going forward www.spiegel.de/international/germany/interview-with-virologist-christian-drosten-i-am-quite-apprehensive-about-what-might-otherwise-happen-in-spring-and-summer-a-f22c0495-5257-426e-bddc-c6082d6434d5

@Barracker, nice to see you back by the way, remember you from the spring!