COVID case numbers in Bolton do look rather scary.
BUT...
These cases are very heavily weighted towards younger age groups who are less likely to have been offered a vaccine and are less likely to end up in hospital.
There has been a rise in cases in people in their 50s/60s in the last few days of complete data, which we need to watch
Overall the age profile of cases in the current outbreak in Bolton is quite different to what we've seen before.
Some of this will be differences in testing, particularly among schoolchildren, but I doubt we're testing people aged 50+ less than we were back in January.
The latest admissions data only runs up to 9th May (we'll get another week's tomorrow) but absolutely no signs of danger here.
If we compare hospital admissions rates in Bolton to the rest of England, then things don't look particularly different to anywhere else.
It's also worth pointing out that although there are a few other areas which have seen recent jumps in the numbers of cases, Bolton is very much an outlier.
No sign yet of anywhere else following the same trajectory.
Obviously that's no reason to take unnecessary risks, but I'm still not panicking just yet.
Finally, in terms of vaccination rates. It is true that the parts of Bolton at the centre of the current outbreak do have lower vaccination rates than the rest of Bolton. But overall vaccination rates aren't particularly low compared to the rest of the country.
If you adjust for age, to account for the fact that areas with younger populations *should* have lower overall vaccination rates as fewer people will have been invited yet, Bolton looks even less remarkable.
Here's a zoomed in set of maps for Bolton.
We know cases are largely in age groups who haven't even been offered vaccinations yet. The story in Bolton isn't that low vaccination uptake has caused this outbreak. It might exacerbate it's effects, but it wasn't the cause.
R code for all these plots is in here somewhere. Let me know if you want code for a specific plot (sorry, short of time and these plots are from all over the place!)
github.com/VictimOfMaths/…
UPDATE:
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