The headline is that during the most recent week (18 to 24 September) there were around 8,400 new infections per day not including those living in institutional settings, *down* from 9,600 previous week.
We also had the Imperial "REACT1" interim incidence report this week which also pointed to a slowdown, and the KCL Zoe app (tracking symptomatic cases) points in the same direction
Extraordinary difference of ICU admission rates in different areas of the country, but nowhere remotely close to levels in spring.
Emergency admissions, again, levelling off.
Source: surveillance report
4. Covid triage
Online / phone 111 covid triage starting to return to normal after the back-to-school/college jump, but (critically) the pattern in vulnerable >70s shows the same pattern as incidence: higher levels than summer, but levelling off
5a. Pillars 1&2 - last couple of weeks & last month (2nd wave) & full curve (bear in mind the left-hand side was heavily rationed for testing, the right-hand side *far* less so: the 'two waves' are not comparable).
5b. Breakdown of pillar 1 (clinical need / NHS) and pillar 2 (community swab) cases and % positive. Again, the left-hand side was heavily rationed for testing, the right-hand side *far* less so.
Source: PHE covid surveillance report
6 Contact tracing
400k contacts now reached; assuming (per Smith et al paper) 10% have isolated as instructed, at a cost of £12bn that is £240k per isolation. Value?
Mostly our own housemates and guests, who we could tell anyway
I'm going to drop this from future updates as it was a pointless and embarrassing thing for our CSO to have put in front of the media, and now looks snarky.
But note that the red line forecast (or whatever) is a mile away from blue line trend.
8 Mortality
Taking rolling last-12-months all-cause deaths, 2020 now doesn't look much more of an outlier above trend than 2019 was under trend.
This is Toby Young (@toadmeister)'s response to my piece in the @spectator, which he very fairly follows by a frontline account from an in-house senior doctor in London.
I am still a lockdown sceptic, and Toby sets out very well the principled objections to lockdown that I still believe too. 2/n
I still think the 1st lockdown went on too long, with harms likely to have outweighed the benefits. TikTok punting videos while people missed basic healthcare is revolting.
I don't think the 2nd lockdown was well justified: the arguments that convince me now didn't then. 3/n
ONS: Incidence now up to 35k per day, 0.9% overall; huge variance regionally and by age group, with young getting infected *much* faster than old (good news), and this is backed up by Zoe (KCL/CSS) data: (
My experience of contact tracing.
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My daughter was sent home from school to isolate Tuesday morning, following a positive test by her teacher (who had been isolating since Friday).
She rapidly developed (moderate) fever and kept falling asleep (fine now), so was tested /1
This was 2.30pm Tuesday.
Result came through 10pm Thursday; within half an hour we had phoned all contacts (piano teacher, school, houseguests, other direct contacts).
Contact tracers phoned us 17 hours later (Friday afternoon); we gave them all the same information. /2
I asked what the point of contacting people we had already contacted; they confessed "basically... not much".
Since then they have repeatedly been contacting us (in isolation) by phone and text to confirm our details, even though I've told them we're isolating. /3
Note sharp age distinction in ONS / REACT1; if you favour the "GB Declaration" approach (see below) you would want the difference between young and old incidence and trajectory as great as possible
1a. Pillars 1&2 - last couple of weeks & last month (current wave) & full curve. Bear in mind the left-hand side was heavily rationed for testing, the right-hand side far less so: the 'two waves' are not comparable.
1b. English pillar 1 (clinical need / NHS) and pillar 2 (community swab) cases and % positive. The left-hand side was heavily rationed for testing, the right-hand side *far* less so.