Stats that explain June delay

[MistySkiesAfterRain]

I confess I've stopped following the news and stats. I've not seen as much reference to stats on cases and hospitalisation in relation to the decision to delay reopening in June, but I'm sure there must be some. I'm surprised the fact that most of the higher age groups have had 2 vaccines isn't enough to reopen as planned. Does anyone have a graph of what groups have been vaccinated/when?

My understanding is that there isn't enough evidence of how much more severe/deadly/hospitalisable the Delta strain is, and they want to wait to understand that before opening up.

We know its more transmissable, we know it is partially vaccine resistant (particularly with AZ which is what the older generations mainly had), and we know it is similar in its mutations to the Kent variant, which has now been shown to be more deadly.

So my understanding is that they need a few more weeks of data before they're able to say whether or not we're in a position to relax restrictions more. Tbey want to be sure vaccinations have halted the link between infections and hospitalisations/deaths. This pesky virus that keeps mutating and changing the playing field right at the last minute.

Does anyone know where there is data on cases broken down by age? I am really interested to know whether the recent rise in cases is mostly among unvaccinated younger people, in schools and so on. Can anyone point me towards anything on that?

Try here, Simone

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/

Thank you @lljkk but that seems to be hospitalisations not cases?

Take a look at Lawrence Gilder's Twitter account, he posts daily figures and graphs, there is lots of really great information in these about what's happening with numbers of cases, deaths, vaccination and breakdowns by age, area etc.

sorry, that's hospitalisations, for under 18s it hasn't changed much.
I know case info by age /region is somewhere in public domain, too.

This is a useful overview too.

twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1403423583641210880?s=19

@SimonedeBeauvoirscat if you go on to the PHE dashboard, go to 'cases' and then select your local authority from the drop down menu you can see a heat map of cases in a 7 day period by 100,000 for each 5 year age group e.g. pictured is Kent . There's also a line graph showing 60+ vs under 60s. I'm not sure if you can see this for the whole of England/UK though but would like to see if someone finds one.

It seems to me that the issue is vaccines are not going to work for every individual so getting high vaccine coverage to stop transmission is the important thing to stop hospital admissions and deaths. Even if vaccines are 90% effective 1 in 10 could still catch covid. Even a small % is a big number if the denominator is large enough so if case rates go really high because the new variant spreading more quickly than the previous one (even if mainly amongst young, healthy people) a lot of people who are vaccinated would still catch it and die because one in ten of tens of millions is still millions.

So I wonder if the plan is for, say, 75% coverage (2 doses) over the next 5/6 weeks to bring case rates down before summer and then getting kids vaccinated in September.

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong but this just seems sensible to me.

I'm a key worker. I had covid at the beginning of the year. I have also had 2 Pfizer jabs, the second in April. I am currently isolating at home as I have tested positive again. In the large number of questions I answered when going through the test and trace process, I was never once asked my vaccination status. How can they know the impact of the vaccines if they are not asking this?

Potentially by matching your NHS number @paintedkites? But Idk, I've tried to find out if infection rates amongst vaccinated are being monitored somewhere - there have been a couple of reports on effectiveness against Delta variant, haven't there? They also seem to be monitoring no. vaccinated who are admitted to hospital.
I'm guessing modelling of the effect of vaccines on infection rates is based on findings of clinical trials but not sure.

@Bananasareyellow oh thank you v much that is useful. Yes I would v much like a national version of that chart. I’ll have a look at the local level though.

Ok so there is an England-level version of that heatplot on the PHE website. It confirms my suspicion that new cases are very concentrated in teens and 20 somethings.

?
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19roundup/2020-03-26

Found it, download here, OP

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/download

I'm playing with the daily case count data, using libreOffice which I don't know well. Raw not smoothed counts.

Plot shows recent dates (up to 9 June) on left down to end of April on right.

Under 50s only, Bolton only.

they had a lot of Delta in Bolton, right? And surge testing?

The case counts don't look like they are getting "out of control"

Vaccinated counts in age groups are probably on the link I gave earlier, too

Bradford this time, only 10 May - 9 June.

I chose Bradford because it had the highest count (of any area) in age 15-19, on 9 June. Delta has been spreading fast there, I guess.

I suppose the boffins are waiting to see if the rise turns exponential or plateaus out, and what that does to hospitalisations or long covid.

@SimonedeBeauvoirscat

Ok so there is an England-level version of that heatplot on the PHE website. It confirms my suspicion that new cases are very concentrated in teens and 20 somethings.

Is that hospitalisations too?

There's obviously enough data to worry Biden. Unlike most of Europe, we remain on America's list of high risk countries, from where entry is restricted.

30% of those who've died from the Delta strain were doubly vaccinated. I don't know which vaccine they were given (or if that's relevant).

The risk isn't just about hospitalisation or death. The more cases, the greater the risk of Long Covid - which can lead to organ damage and trigger diabetes.

twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1404525333316001798?s=19

twitter said:

So the SAGE modelling accompanying the delay suggests full re-opening on the 21st would have caused over 250k cases /day. That's a rate of just over 400 /100k. Even without Step 4, Warwick project about 100k /day by 21 June - a rate of about 170 /100k (LSHTM a bit lower).

For reference the ONS estimate daily infections in England peaked in December 2020 at 107k per day. That's in winter and with virtually no-one vaccinated.

For further reference, the peak rate of positive tests (noting that this will be less than total infections) in Florida which got rid of all its state-level restrictions/capacity limits last Sept was 81 /100k. Again in Jan with virtually no-one vaccinated.

In other words, SAGE have told the Govt that going ahead with Stage 4 would lead to a catastrophic and globally unprecedented increase in infections. In the middle of summer and despite the huge vaccination programme.

Note 250k per day is the central estimate. Warwick's upper estimate of the peak resulting from Step 4 looks closer to 350k infections per day, a rate of nearly 600 per 100k. Where do you even start with this?

@MistySkiesAfterRain I’m going to suggest you track down today’s press conference and have a listen. Ignore the buffoon with the bad hair at the beginning and skip to Chris Whitty. He gave a very clear summary of where we are and the rationale for the extension, which I think will answer you.

Sorry of daft question but watched the press conference.
Boris said its doubling every 7days.
So from today to 19th thats 5 weeks so will covid infections be 5 times higher than now or 10?
Was lot of brown areas on the heat also many down south not all north east.

The press conference is the best place - it really helped me understand.

@3asAbird

Sorry of daft question but watched the press conference. Boris said its doubling every 7days. So from today to 19th thats 5 weeks so will covid infections be 5 times higher than now or 10? Was lot of brown areas on the heat also many down south not all north east.

It's not a daft question. Whitty said that by July 19th the rates, hospitalisations and possibly deaths will be a lot higher than they are at the moment. At the moment we don't know for sure the effect on hospitalisations and deaths. The death rate is low right now. The difference is that by the 19th of July all adults should have been offered at least one jab and all vulnerable people should have been offered their second. Hopefully even with very high rates of infections, the death rates won't climb and the vaccinations will have been successful.

@3asAbird

Sorry of daft question but watched the press conference. Boris said its doubling every 7days. So from today to 19th thats 5 weeks so will covid infections be 5 times higher than now or 10? Was lot of brown areas on the heat also many down south not all north east.

If it’s doubling every 7 days, then in 5 weeks it will be 32x as high as it is now.

If we take 7,500 as the rough number of new cases per day:
In 7 days - double that is 15,000
In 14 days - 30,000
In 21 days - 60,000
In 28 days - 120,000
In 35 days - 240,000

What is less clear is what the doubling rate for hospitalisations is. But there is a similar iss with how quickly the low number we have now can lead to very big numbers after a few doublings exists. What’s a bit of an unknown at the moment is how much the vaccines and the variant will have changed the ratio of the number cases and he number of people needing hospital treatment.

[quote Motorina]@MistySkiesAfterRain I’m going to suggest you track down today’s press conference and have a listen. Ignore the buffoon with the bad hair at the beginning and skip to Chris Whitty. He gave a very clear summary of where we are and the rationale for the extension, which I think will answer you.[/quote]
Will do.

I keep an eye on this map. A few weeks ago, it was almost all white, in my area. Now it's looking more like it did at Easter. coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map