Data, Stats and Daily Numbers started 30th August 2021

[boys3]

This is the DATA thread. We welcome factual, data driven and analytical contributions

Please try to keep discussion focused on these.

UK govt press conferences slides & data www.gov.uk/government/collections/slides-and-datasets-to-accompany-coronavirus-press-conferences#history
PHE Variants of Concern Technical Briefings www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201
PHE Vaccine efficacy www.gov.uk/government/publications/phe-monitoring-of-the-effectiveness-of-covid-19-vaccination
SAGE : Minutes and Models www.gov.uk/government/collections/scientific-evidence-supporting-the-government-response-to-coronavirus-covid-19
Data Dashboard coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ includes R estimates
PHE Weekly Flu & Covid Surveiilance Reports 2021-22 Season www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports-2021-to-2022-season
Dashboard Vaccine Map to MSOA level coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map/vaccinations
Covid 19 Genomics www.cogconsortium.uk/tools-analysis/public-data-analysis-2/
Sanger Genome Maps & Data covid19.sanger.ac.uk/lineages/raw
UCL Virus Watch ucl-virus-watch.net/
NHS Vaccination data www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-vaccinations/
Sewage www.gov.uk/government/publications/wastewater-testing-coverage-data-for-19-may-2021-emhp-programme/wastewater-testing-coverage-data-for-the-environmental-monitoring-for-health-protection-emhp-programme.
Sewage reports www.gov.uk/government/publications/monitoring-of-sars-cov-2-rna-in-england-wastewater-monthly-statistics-june-2021
Global vaccination data ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
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 imperialcollegelondon.github.io/covid19local/#map
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 MSOA Map English deaths www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

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, cases, tests, deaths Dashboard public.tableau.com/profile/public.health.wales.health.protection#!/vizhome/RapidCOVID-19virology-Public/Headlinesummary
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 (from last summer) 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 (European Centre for Disease Control rolling 14-day incidence EEA & UK www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-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=eur&areas=usa&areas=bra&areas=gbr&areas=cze&areas=hun&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usnj&areasRegional=usaz&areasRegional=usca&areasRegional=usnd&areasRegional=ussd&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2020-09-01&values=deaths

PHE local health data fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/health-profiles
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

@sirfredfredgeorge

And apparently R is expected to be between 1. and 1.5

Which is a strange expectation, given that R has been between 0.9 and 1.1 for some time now, and every added infection (which is ~1% a week of the population) reduces R. What's their hypothesis for the huge increase?

"Sage modellers expect R – the number of people an infected person typically infects – to rise from about 1 in England to between 1.1 and 1.5 with schools reopening and people returning to work."

Is anyone on here working with SAGE and able to explain further ?

sorry @Bizawit, didn't see in time that you pulled that

*I've seen calculations on here giving r as around 8 or 9, and apparently delta in a vaccinated population is worse than alpha in an unvaccinated population was.

I dont pretend to be a scientist or mathematician, so I don't understand why the r is so low?*

That's the estimate of R in a population without any mitigations and with no existing immunity. Every mitigation (reducing contacts) and everyone who cannot get infected (immunity due to previous infection of vaccine) or are harder to infect (partial vaccine protection, waned immunity) reduce it.

Simplisticly, Imagine 100 people in a night club, if none have ever seen the virus, all could catch it and if R was 10 then the expectation is 10 of them will. However if half the people have already had it, then five of the ten who would've been infected in the previous case would not catch so the effective R is now 5.

@MarshaBradyo

It also depends on what you do with the abundance of caution models.

Scenario plan or act on it. As with all this it’s a balance between elements that bring a cost.

Absolutely this.

Thanks sirfred

@herecomesthsun

sorry *@Bizawit*, didn't see in time that you pulled that

Yes sorry I realised I read your post wrong.

Is anyone on here working with SAGE and able to explain further?

Just reading a thread on twitter where they are saying the calculations were made using what was going on in June-July as their base point. So, like previous modelling the "inputs" were out of date (although, understandably so as there has to be a particular data point that gets input i guess?)

Cases in secondary schoolchildren tend to dip in the holidays

I have to say though, I don’t think this is a meaningful stat, because of the continuous routine testing in schools which doesn’t happen in the holidays..

So, like previous modelling the "inputs" were out of date

The graph on possible options for hospitalisations is out of date already, they are (as always it seems) below their most optimistic graphed option after 9 days.

I would have thought abundance of caution a better option, personally,

I find this attitude, unqualified, very worrying. We know that many cautious interventions have a profound impact on education, earning capacity, mental health etc, which in turn affect health.

There are many diseases which cause long-term problems and death. Many we do not even count the cases. We do not put in place measures which are deleterious for the population to prevent them.

I think we need to be very sure that any interventions we take in the face of any one virus are proportionate.

Sir Patrick Vallance said yesterday (about pre-emptive cautious measures) "When you make a move, you have to go earlier than you think you want to, you have to go harder than you think you want to and you have to make sure you have got the right geographical coverage.”

The problem is that we don't have a way of envisaging how the alternatives are going to turn out. It's always going to be very controversial.

Talking of controversial... theres a study out today about schools which has a conclusion that daily LFT testing is as effective as quarantine and "school contacts rarely resulted in transmission"

😱

Sounds interesting Bordois

Re caution or not presumably many thought that we’d be in dire straits by now, U.K. experiment etc and we didn’t go early on it.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673621019085?dgcid=author

I cant science enough to read through and actually understand it myself though 🤣

There seems to be some coordinated anti vaxxing going on today. Messages on threads such as this, some directed PMs. Banners and protests outside schools (including a local school for kids aged 3-8).

Sigh.

@amicissimma

I would have thought abundance of caution a better option, personally,

I find this attitude, unqualified, very worrying. We know that many cautious interventions have a profound impact on education, earning capacity, mental health etc, which in turn affect health.

There are many diseases which cause long-term problems and death. Many we do not even count the cases. We do not put in place measures which are deleterious for the population to prevent them.

I think we need to be very sure that any interventions we take in the face of any one virus are proportionate.

I did mean about the data, and I did put personally on the end. Spi -B will always be brought in to consider human cost and behaviour.

@Bordois

Talking of controversial... theres a study out today about schools which has a conclusion that daily LFT testing is as effective as quarantine and "school contacts rarely resulted in transmission"

😱

I think that was out as a pre-print a while ago and was, as you can imagine, discussed at length on Twitter ;-) - it's now been peer reviewed and published in the Lancet.

As far as I can see on a quick reread, the most pertinent points for now are that the study happened (April-June) when cases were super low anyway, and other mitigations were in play - distancing, masks, bubbles - whereas of course they are not now. So it's not quite the same situation....

There was also no statistical difference in terms of school days lost over the period, as attendance was very variable.

So - interesting, but applicable learnings for right now appear small.

and people returning to work

I am going to say this, this is probably the thing which absolutely most irritates me in the Sage documents, it shows just how uncaring and slapdash the work and editor of these documents are.

People are not returning to work, some may be returning to the office, but people have worked throughout, the fact that such language makes it through just provides me with no signals that any of the rest of it is competent.

I think that study is interesting but daily testing has never been on the table in schools. The twice weekly testing has really not picked up many cases (albeit some).

I note in the study they used daily LFDs. I do think their study would be more robust with PCRs. They pretty much note this themselves. There is also so little testing in the primary sector that I think it must be very hard to draw any useful conclusions about transmission there.

I don't think anyone doubts that households are the main place for onward transmission , and that keeping schools, workplaces etc as safe as possible impacts onwards to households.

@sirfredfredgeorge

and people returning to work

I am going to say this, this is probably the thing which absolutely most irritates me in the Sage documents, it shows just how uncaring and slapdash the work and editor of these documents are.

People are not returning to work, some may be returning to the office, but people have worked throughout, the fact that such language makes it through just provides me with no signals that any of the rest of it is competent.

I love this level of care and agree language precision is key.

One thing I really appreciate about Chris Whitty. I don’t think he’s put a foot wrong with language and is very careful. Even harder when you are speaking. Patrick Valance too probably.

That kind of measured speech is where I feel most comfortable- stark contrast to a lot on SM actually

@sirfredfredgeorge - it reminds me of early stage first lockdown when there seemed to be a highly irritating assumption that everyone was out at work or on furlough. The difficulties of working at home with toddlers / home schooling / working from cramped shared flats and bedrooms just whitewashed out. Shame to see that perpetuates with some.

Well, I was just quoting SAGE and I realise that people's work situations are complex.

Then again, possibly so do they and this was a summary and over-simplification of their discussions (idly wonders how many people on SAGE might be women who found themselves homeschooling)

One thing I really appreciate about Chris Whitty. I don’t think he’s put a foot wrong with language and is very careful. Even harder when you are speaking. Patrick Valance too probably

Same can definitely not be said of Boris 🤣

This may be relevant to the discussion about workplaces "People should be allowed to continue working from home rather than being forced back into offices, a scientist advising the Government has said.

Prof Stephen Reicher, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), which feeds into Sage, said the number of people's contacts per week had reached the highest number in a year.

"When you look more closely, what you find is nearly all of that is due to people mixing at work - a 63 per cent increase - and virtually none to do with meeting in the home and with socialising," he said.

"So the problem isn't that people are choosing to party all the time, the problem is people are given no choice because they are required to go back to work.

"So again, the problem doesn't lie in public psychology, it lies in policy which forces people to do particular things. That's why it would make sense for people to work at home if they can, and if they want to, to avoid presenteeism, forcing people to go in." "

www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-covid-vaccine-winter-plan-lockdown-cases-deaths/

Sorry, I did realise that and intended my remarks as criticism of Sage rather than you @herecomesthsun.