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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

yeah, but hovering around 1k/day for ages, then...not good.
Deaths still down. Hospitalisations continuing to fall. Pillar 1 tests not rising significantly, the increasing numbers coming from an increasingly focused Pillar 2 system. It might not quite be the bad news you think it is.

This could change, of course. We could start to see hospitalisations and deaths creep back up again. But it hasn't happened yet.
 
Deaths still down. Hospitalisations continuing to fall. Pillar 1 tests not rising significantly, the increasing numbers coming from an increasingly focused Pillar 2 system. It might not quite be the bad news you think it is.

This could change, of course. We could start to see hospitalisations and deaths creep back up again. But it hasn't happened yet.
I'm pretty certain that we're going to follow our European neighbours on an upward trajectory. :(
 
I'm pretty certain that we're going to follow our European neighbours on an upward trajectory. :(
Well, to temper that, the ZoeCovid study has been estimating a falling number of symptomatic covid-19 cases in the UK for the last couple of weeks as positive tests have crept up (from around 30,000 to 18,000 - setting that in context, they estimate a peak level of 2 million back at the start of April), with new cases steady at about the same level as they were at their lowest a few weeks ago.

COVID Symptom Study
 
Looks like a pretty serious escalation of the punishments for holding - or even attending (?) gatherings is coming in now.
£10,000 fine if more than 30 people not from same household are together in a non commercial event, is what it looks like.
This stuff should be much clearer and needs to be actually communicated to people properly.
That’s a huge fine. Probably would encompass demonstrations as well as the ‘raves’ it’s supposed to be about targeting.

 
Yes I see. But this covers so much wider than raves.
Here’s the legislation, raves is one part of it but the second half looks incredibly broad & a flat £10,000 fine.
 
Went to dental hygienist today - the first place I've been in that is really taking this shit seriously (understandably). The dentist receptionist opens the door for you, puts your coat and bag into a box, and takes it out for you at the end. Waiting room just two chairs well over 6ft apart!
 
Well, to temper that, the ZoeCovid study has been estimating a falling number of symptomatic covid-19 cases in the UK for the last couple of weeks as positive tests have crept up (from around 30,000 to 18,000 - setting that in context, they estimate a peak level of 2 million back at the start of April), with new cases steady at about the same level as they were at their lowest a few weeks ago.

COVID Symptom Study
If that is vaguely accurate... Scotland no longer looking so good, in relative terms.
 
If that is vaguely accurate... Scotland no longer looking so good, in relative terms.
It never did. ;) according to the Zoe study, Scotland's better position relative to England was never really true. Various Scotland-sized bits of England - London, se, sw - have been doing as well if not better from May onwards.

Caveat to that is that the study is now supported by swab tests in England only, so Scotland figures have a much larger margin of error.

One oddity of current figures is that a third of hospitalised cases in the UK are now in Scotland. Feels like a measuring difference of some kind more than anything, but Scotland's numbers haven't fallen in the same way as everywhere else.
 
It never did. ;) according to the Zoe study, Scotland's better position relative to England was never really true.
Actually yes... in fact I think I've argued that on this thread before.
What caught my eye was the relatively high numbers for the north of Scotland. I'm currently in semi-quarantine in an attempt to reduce the risk of me taking the plague from London to the Highlands next week. But according to that site, the number per head of active cases in the Highlands is greater than in Lambeth.
 
One oddity of current figures is that a third of hospitalised cases in the UK are now in Scotland. Feels like a measuring difference of some kind more than anything, but Scotland's numbers haven't fallen in the same way as everywhere else.

I used to look at the figures for Scotland more directly, since they had daily figures for suspected as well as confirmed cases in hospital and ICU, and number of COVID-19 suspected ambulance attendances and admissions. But in the last 2 months they have stopped publishing quite a lot of that interesting additional data. Here is a link to the source of data anyway Coronavirus (COVID-19): trends in daily data - gov.scot

Differences in reporting of these things between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are something I wish the press had explored and got answers to over time, but most hospital data is treated by the press like it does not exist in the first place.

With no knowledge about why the numbers are different, I cannot really say how much is down to reporting methodology or whether differences in treatment for individual patients are also a factor. I'd certainly like to know if there are any obvious areas where England may be undercounting. And its entirely possible that the differences relate to how patients are eventually not classified as being Covid-19 patients any longer.

As we are in a phase where hospital data is of particular interest, eg looking for any upticks, I am wary of what happened in the past. On several occasions when things like ICU and admissions data became of special interest and was about to tell its own important story, they stopped publishing the data. But that was pre-dashboard days, where that data only came via daily number 10 briefing slides. So hopefully I will never have to make noises along these lines in future, but I have my doubts.
 
Actually yes... in fact I think I've argued that on this thread before.
What caught my eye was the relatively high numbers for the north of Scotland. I'm currently in semi-quarantine in an attempt to reduce the risk of me taking the plague from London to the Highlands next week. But according to that site, the number per head of active cases in the Highlands is greater than in Lambeth.
Thing I'd say about that is that, now that the numbers are down so low, a fair bit of volatility is showing up at a local level on the Zoe App. London boroughs can be up one week then down the next, for instance. All it takes is a single 'superspreader' event to bump a region up for a week or two. Plus the margin of error at that level is big cos the absolute numbers of people in the study reporting sickness are low.

But I'm doing similar for a trip to Wales next week (first time out of London since February!). It's still a sensible thing to do if you're travelling from one bit of the country to another, regardless of the reported infection levels. It's people moving about that are spreading the virus.
 
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