James Ward@jamesward73
This is a powerful graph: it shows how the growth trend in positive cases shifted rapidly over the last week, from high and positive everywhere, to roughly stable: with falling cases in younger ages balanced by continued (but reduced) growth in older groups: 1/5
That data is averaged over a week, so won’t capture the most recent trends. If we look at the data with less averaging, we can see that growth in the older age groups has also now fallen to near zero – even better news, which should feed into hospital admissions very soon. 2/5
Drilling down further to the 20-24s, and with no averaging at all, we can see that we may have hit the bottom on growth rates, at a frankly incredible -67% weekly growth. BUT I’m not sure that’s really a meaningful figure, as it represents the removal of the Euros peak, 3/5
…plus the impact of our recent heatwave (which is now fading), so I’d expect that blue line to rise in the next few days, before it finds its new trend. I’d like to think it will still be slightly negative, but it’s hard to call: it all depends on the impact of Step 4. 4/5
The good news on that front is that there’s no sign yet of an explosion from the opening-up on Monday, but of course we may see more impact from the first weekend of open clubs etc., and/or from a more gradual relaxation of cautious behaviour. But so far, so good. 5/5