(Caution due on the NE/Yorks piece of that chart: doesn't tally with the Zoe incidence data, which otherwise generally ties in well with ONS).
2. Care home outbreaks
Another bad week. Somebody suggested that this might be picking up staff cases, but NHS now publish hospital admissions from care homes showing an increase.
Healthcare burden: Covid inpatients in hospital and mechanical ventilation beds ("ICU"?) show very significant differences in both level and trajectory across the country.
So a one-size-fits-all approach to protect hospital capacity is clearly nonsense.
4. Covid triage
Still no surge in triage calls from over 70s, which should be a "canary in the coalmine" of an approaching spike in hospital admissions.
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
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
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.
"The scrutiny provided by our legislature was absent when it was most required.
The social costs of lockdown are extraordinary: the burden of proof for every day it was maintained should have been more extraordinary still. +
"It should never have been down to a cabinet, let alone the coronavirus quad or a poorly prime minister, to decide when rights we have taken for granted since Magna Carta should be restored: their suspension should have needed justifying daily, with the bar set high. +
We should be profoundly concerned at the precedent: the legislation was fatally flawed by the omission of a dead man’s switch, such that civil liberties would be restored automatically the moment their suspension was not overwhelmingly and objectively justified. +
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) cases and % positive. Again, bear in mind that the left-hand side was heavily rationed for testing, the right-hand side *far* less so. Positivity currently 1.6%
*Critical data*. In week 37 there were 10x more outbreaks in care homes than in food outlets and restaurants; interventions targeted at the latter would be pointless.
On Friday evenings I'm going to release a thread like this on English covid data that I think is useful / reliable. If you don't want to follow the rest of my ranting, the # will be #ahcveng
• Cases: pillar 1
• Care home outbreaks
• Hospital deaths & admissions
• Sundry
1. English pillar 1 (clinical need & NHS) cases and % positive
1a: why not pillar 2? Because I regard the data as corrupted by door-to-door testing of asymptomatic cases in hotspot areas, and testing of children / students with mild symptoms which will 🔼% positive while 🔽 usefulness (more non-infectious high Ct "weak" positives).