Thread by @Kit_Yates_Maths

Despite the good news in cases over all (see thread below), looking at the data unsegregated by age masks what is happening for different age groups.

We are almost seeing two different epidemic trajectories by age across the UK.

A short🧵

Case rates for ages 20-59 and over 60s remain stable or have reduced slights in most regions.

But case per 100K per week for the under 20s have risen week on week in most regions (with the exception of the North East).

However, the trends in under 20s in the last few days have looked flatter or even down slightly in most regions.

Aggregated across the country there have been clear rises in the under 20 cohort since schools (slightly before) reopened although that seems to be starting to flatten off. These rises do not yet seem to have bled through into the older age groups when viewed at this coarse level

The biggest rises seem to have been in the 10-14 and 15-19 age ranges (largely corresponding to secondary school students) while 5-9s (most of primary aged- children) saw increases initially which have now levelled off and started to fall.

Lateral flow testing has been level or fallen for the last couple of weeks so it seems unlikely that recent rises are a result of increased testing.
Testing changes may explain some of the rises seen before schools went back as testing ramped up and some of the recent falls too.

As always, it's going to be important to keep an eye on what happens in different age cohorts.

We might expect to see falls in cases in younger age groups as the effect of the Easter break kicks in.

Thanks to Bob Hawkins with his help preparing the data.