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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

I'm inclined to think today's jump in infections might (just guessing) have something to do with the "last hurrahs" going on with people dashing about etc before the 5th November ...
 
StoneRoad said:
I'm inclined to think today's jump in infections might (just guessing) have something to do with the "last hurrahs" going on with people dashing about etc before the 5th November ...
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Nah, its been heading in this direction for a while now. Its pretty clear to me we're just seeing the realisation of where we've been going for a long time. We've seen with this virus things don't just appear from nowhere in dramatic style. There is a sustained build-up.

ETA: No doubt it will be terrible again next week and there will be people pointing the finger at the vaccine announcement and people's reaction to it being the cause but in reality it'll just be because the virus is so widespread at the moment.
 
Teaboy said:
Nah, its been heading in this direction for a while now. Its pretty clear to me we're just seeing the realisation of where we've been going for a long time. We've seen with this virus things don't just appear from nowhere in dramatic style. There is a sustained build-up.
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It's not really. It's been nearly flat for three weeks. Even suggestions that infection levels are now falling in some parts of the country. Other areas may be rising more quickly, perhaps.

But as ever with one day's figure, you need to look at date of test rather than date reported. This big figure today may be a catch-up more than anything. We'll see.

595 is yesterday's death figure, btw. They haven't changed it yet.
 
I think one of the effects of the vaccine announcement must be that it will be extremely difficult for the government to impose further restrictions to what we have now. Ramp up the restrictions.

I mean, the government had to talk about the vaccine and they tried to play it down but the situation has rather boxed them into a corner.
 
teuchter said:
The Zoe graph continues to show a consistent decline in estimated active infections. It has the peak around 5/6 Nov.
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It does, but different parts of the country are at different stages. It shows NW, Scotland falling rapidly now. NE, Wales just starting to fall. South of England, east, west and London, all of which have been much less badly affected, are all around level at the moment. We've seen elsewhere (Catalonia, for instance) rates level off before taking off again.
 
frogwoman said:
We won't see any changes in infection rates until another week or two I don't think
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I know that deaths tend to lag intervention by at least 3 to 4 weeks, but I'd have thought that the infection rate should respond much sooner than that to an effective intervention?
 
littlebabyjesus said:
It does, but different parts of the country are at different stages. It shows NW, Scotland falling rapidly now. NE, Wales just starting to fall. South of England, east, west and London, all of which have been much less badly affected, are all around level at the moment. We've seen elsewhere (Catalonia, for instance) rates level off before taking off again.
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Much of Scotland had been in comparatively stricter measures since the start of November so maybe that's now showing up.
 
Sue said:
Much of Scotland had been in comparatively stricter measures since the start of November so maybe that's now showing up.
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In the Zoe stats, the falls in Scotland show as having started around 20 October. Their estimate of daily new symptomatic covid rate shows Scotland turning a pretty sharp corner around then, down from nearly 100 per 100,000 to just over 50 now. NW England is also shown plummetting atm, having started to fall a few days after Scotland.
 
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littlebabyjesus said:
In the Zoe stats, the falls in Scotland show as having started around 20 October. Their estimate of daily new symptomatic covid rate shows Scotland turning a pretty sharp corner around then, down from nearly 100 per 100,000 to just over 50 now. NW is also shown plummetting atm, having started to fall a few days after Scotland.
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I dont have access to their regional figures, are any still going up?
 
littlebabyjesus said:
In the Zoe stats, the falls in Scotland show as having started around 20 October. Their estimate of daily new symptomatic covid rate shows Scotland turning a pretty sharp corner around then, down from nearly 100 per 100,000 to just over 50 now. NW is also shown plummetting atm, having started to fall a few days after Scotland.
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Interesting, especially as they're introducing stricter measures in a couple of new areas from tomorrow.
 
Teaboy said:
I think one of the effects of the vaccine announcement must be that it will be extremely difficult for the government to impose further restrictions to what we have now. Ramp up the restrictions.

I mean, the government had to talk about the vaccine and they tried to play it down but the situation has rather boxed them into a corner.
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I don't get this thinking at all. It's like people don't get how vaccines work. As if it can somehow retroactively make things better.

It really should make it easier, lock down hard now to save lives until the vaccine is ready and distributed. Having some light at the end of the tunnel should make it eraser for people to mange being locked down.
 
elbows said:
I dont have access to their regional figures, are any still going up?
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Midlands is flat. Everywhere else is possibly turning down, but for the south of England generally, it's still basically flat enough not to call it as a fall yet. NW, NE, Scot and Wales are all given as falling. They give UK R as 0.9.

About two or three days ago, for the first time in ages, their estimated R was 1.0 or lower in every region - that's done for a date four days ago (currently 8 Nov), based on the two weeks up to that date.
 
Also regarding infection levels, REACT-1 study has updated but I havent had a chance to absorb its findings yet. But I will quote a bit.


In contrast with our findings for mid- to late-October, we found evidence for a slowdown in the epidemic during the final days of October and beginning of November 2020, with suggestion of a fall and then rise in prevalence during that period. This slowdown was seen across the country, both North and South, and was not being driven by any one region. The largest falls in prevalence were seen during late October to beginning November in Yorkshire and The Humber, which had previously had the highest prevalence in the country. We also saw reductions in prevalence at the sub-regional level in that region. Falls in prevalence during this period were also observed at the youngest ages in our study (5 to 12 years).
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During this period there was evidence of a downturn in daily infections from the national surveillance data on symptomatic cases (“Pillar 1 and 2”) [1] and from the coronavirus symptom app (Zoe app) [12], and a plateau in data from the Office for National Statistics Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey [13]. Despite differences between these data streams in their recruitment strategy including whether this is influenced by symptom status [1, 12], all four are broadly consistent in identifying an inflection point towards the end of our study period.
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I would expect half term to be one of the factors that probably affected both testing and reality for the period in question.
 
frogwoman said:
Takes about a week to show symptoms I think.
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Can be more, but average is 3-5 days from exposure to any symptoms showing.

I do think the vaccine announcement has come at a bad time. It was going to be very hard to extend the restrictions anyway, and even though the vaccine won't make any difference this side of 2021 (assuming it works anyway) some people (some MPs and businesses are particularly jumping on it) are already thinking we're on the way back to normal soon because of it.
 
Since I will be using things like hospital admission figures to judge the extent to which measures and other factors have changed the picture, I am currently preparing data. Admissions vary quite a bit day to day which creases very messy graphs, so I am probably going to have to use 7 day averages to smooth things out.

I will post a preliminary version in a bit.
 
So this is what daily hospital Covid-19 admissions (and new diagnoses in hospital) look like by region if I dont use averages to smooth things out:

Screenshot 2020-11-12 at 17.53.52.png

And this is how much clearer things look when I use 7 day rolling averages:

Screenshot 2020-11-12 at 17.55.27.png
Using data from covid-19-hospital-activity
 
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elbows said:
Also regarding infection levels, REACT-1 study has updated but I havent had a chance to absorb its findings yet. But I will quote a bit.






I would expect half term to be one of the factors that probably affected both testing and reality for the period in question.
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Maybe, although the Zoe app at least shows these trends continuing. Encouraging that the various methods broadly agree with one another.
 
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