Jeepers the UK #COVID19 numbers are rising fast.
Another 14,542 cases over the past 24 hours.
We've been assured this is no longer the backlog effect following the data disaster.
And when you drill into the data we're now comfortably above 12k new cases a day *by test date*
Last week it looked v much from the data as if UK cases (at least as reported each day on the govt dashboard) were slowing. This week it's suddenly a v different picture. Compare the red and black lines.
#COVID19 cases are rising fast. Doubling roughly every 10 days.
How does UK compare with France/Spain? Case growth now seems to be accelerating faster than it did there.
Chart 1 is #COVID19 positive tests BY TEST DATE.
I'm going to retire my old chart because it's totally distorted by the data dump. But wave goodbye to it in chart 2
Hospital admissions, which, given all the dodgy data coming out of testing, may in some respects end up being a better measure of #COVID19, are rising, albeit not as fast as cases. Average daily growth in England of about 3-4% depending on whether you look back 7 or 14 days
Hospital admissions rates are growing MUCH more slowly than in Mar.
Rolling 7day #COVID19 admissions in Eng in this wave (RED) surpassed 1k in mid Sept. Now just over 2k.
In March (BLACK) they took 8 days to go from 1k to 10k.
Things could change. But so far this is v different.
Does the recent increase in cases mean we're now in line with the scary @uksciencechief line from a couple of weeks ago?
In short: def closer.
Esp when you compare with what the data was saying before this weekend's revisions.
But more like 10 day doubling, not 7 days
Even so 👀

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More from @EdConwaySky

5 Oct
How ON EARTH did the government manage to temporarily mislay 16,000 test results, putting thousands of people at risk of contracting #COVID19?
I try to explain it here.
Warning: you may find yourself shouting at the screen as you read it news.sky.com/story/coronavi…
A thread with some of the main details:
The key point (and perhaps the second most important revelation today) is that sitting at the very apex of Britain's testing system is a PHE computer system which processes test results and sends positive cases onto Test & Trace.
Now, this computer system works very well when it comes to the test result data coming in from the established pathology labs (pillar 1). There's a secure FTP link from them to something called SGSS. No problems there. But more testing these days is being done by "pillar 2"
Read 16 tweets
4 Oct
Leaving aside the implications for what we know about the spread of #COVID19, which we'll get to in a second, THIS, simply as a story about management of data, is astounding. At one of the most crucial points in the pandemic tens of thousands of positive cases were underreported. Image
We've known for some time there've been problems with #COVID19 data. There were serious problems collating data and turning it into national dashboards from early on. It was being done by hand in the early stages, we revealed in this investigation news.sky.com/story/amp/coro…
It seems those problems have not been laid to rest. Acc to @PHE_uk the explanation for what’s happened is “a technical issue… in the data load process that transfers #COVID19 positive lab results into reporting dashboards.” Thank God this was discovered within a few days... Image
Read 13 tweets
3 Oct
Blimey: 12.872 new #COVID19 cases announced in the UK.
V big number. Biggest single daily number by a long distance.
Explanation is they left some cases out of the past week’s numbers down to “technical” reasons. 🤔
I’m pretty flabbergasted. Eight days - EIGHT DAYS - of #COVID19 case numbers were being under-reported due to “a technical issue which has now been resolved”.
And even tho it’s “resolved” no clarity abt how much of the shortfall is left to be reported. Hundreds? Thousands?
Does this change our picture of the disease?
Perhaps, perhaps not.
If today's figs contain the bulk of underreported cases the trajectory remains pretty similar, tho a bit higher.
But we don't know because once again they've been abysmally vague abt the extent of this. Astounding
Read 5 tweets
2 Oct
Belatedly catching up with Test & Trace data from yday. Good news is on most metrics the performance of Pillar 2 tests (the private bit of the testing network) have improved from the previous week.
⬇️Time taken to get a test result
⬇️Distance travelled to get a test
That said, across the whole of pillar 2 in England the percentage of people getting test results within 24 hours of taking a test is still just 17% as of 17-23 Sep (eg last week). That's still a lot lower than earlier this summer as you can see from this chart:
Actually when it comes to test turnaround the one area where test processing/delivery seems to be slowing down is pillar 1, which is primarily hospital labs - the bit of the system that had held up best thus far
Read 12 tweets
30 Sep
One problem with using #COVID19 trajectories to work out where we may be heading is question marks over the data - something illustrated brilliantly by this chart via @AlexSelbyB. Official case numbers look v v high now, but we weren't measuring cases v well back in spring. Image
Upshot is charts of cases alone are of limited use - and this is before you get to questions about whether the testing figs are reliable. We could look at positive tests as % of total (chart 2). It adjusts for fact we're doing more testing. But is that early data reliable? ImageImage
The best measure of #COVID19 prevalence in England is prob the @ONS infection survey but again: it started after the peak. And right now what we REALLY need to gauge is not post peak but the run up to the peak Image
Read 16 tweets
30 Sep
Pointy-headed thread: Do you remember this tweet of mine from earlier this year? About how extraordinary flows of gold out of the UK are completely changing the picture of UK trade? Well, brief update: it's still happening. Big time.
In the past few quarters, the UK trade account has swung into positive territory for the first time since the 1990s. And not just positive territory: the biggest trade surplus EVER. £16.9bn in Q2 alone...
It's worth emphasising that even if you look at the trade balance as a % of GDP it's still one of the highest levels we've ever seen. Only one other quarter - Q1 1981 - had a higher surplus. And I don't think it's ever swung quite as dramatically as this...
Read 12 tweets

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