Thread by @ProfColinDavis

Now that Covid samples from the South West are being sent to a different lab, rolling rates are undergoing a rather dramatic adjustment. Here's a thread 🧵illustrating that, focusing on the rates for 10-14 year olds.

As a reminder, samples from the South West were being sent to a lab that (for reasons that have not yet been explained) was producing a high rate of false negatives.

This thread from yesterday noted that it was already apparent in September that something was fishy.

Today's thread is about tracking the adjustment that results from having fewer false negatives.

First is Tewkesbury, where the Covid rolling rate has gone from 269 per 100k to over 2560 per 100k in 5 days. That's 3.3 doublings. I don't think I've seen a faster increase.

Next is Cheltenham, where the rate has gone from 548/100K on 10th October to 3154/100k on the 14th October (that's the most recent rate available, as there's always a 5-day lag on these rolling rates by specimen date). That's an increase of almost 500% in the space of 4 days.

Here's Stroud, which shows the same pattern. Note that pronounced (fake) drop in the first half of September, when there were lots of false negatives. Presumably those false negatives continued throughout September (yes, it's a complete mess).

Here's Bath and North East Somerset. Same pattern, but look at that y-axis! 😱

And Gloucester, another place where locals may have been lured into thinking that in mid-September they'd succeeded in getting the rate down lower than in the summer (they hadn't).

And finally, here's Bristol. I could keep going with South Gloucestershire, Swindon, North Somerset, Somerset West and Taunton (another place where the rate is >4000/100k), but you get the picture.

Areas that thought they had some of the lowest Covid rates in England now find themselves with the highest rates in the country, corresponding in some places to 1 in 22 children testing positive in the past week.

It's hard not to conclude we've been failed by Covid cronyism.