Matt Hancock told the Commons today, placing Stoke, Coventry & Slough into Tier 2
"In all those areas, there are more than 100 positive cases per 100,000 people, cases are doubling approximately every fortnight and we are seeing a concerning increase in cases among the over-60s"
So, it appears that we now appear to have criteria for placing local authorities into Tier 2:
- more than 100 cases per 100,000 people
- cases doubling approximately every fortnight
- concerning increase in cases among the over-60s
100 cases per 100,000 seems arbitrary, especially considering it doubles the previous rate for interventions:
Here is my latest heatmap showing how cases are travelling through the age groups.
It is very concerning.
"The first thing to note is the more-than-doubling in the rate of Covid cases in 10-19 year olds. Many of these will be university students, but it's not clear how many of these are schoolchildren.
“Studies in Spain, France, and the US have all shown that although the second wave may start in young people, it will inevitably move to older people.
“The remarkable thing about this disease is that the death rate increases massively with age.
These have been replaced with the National flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports. So, that's good.
And I'll be providing weekly updates on these.
But - a few things.
The new reports don't show hospitalizations by NHS trust. These were useful for showing e.g. the 5th highest hopsital trust with admissions per 100,000 population was in London, not the north of England
Public Health England have published their latest (week 41) COVID surveillance report. However, this is in a new format called the 'influenza and COVID-19 surveillance report'. It is not clear whether a separate COVID report will be published
This report does not appear to contain a watchlist of local authorities. Previous weeks have contained a watchlist of local authorities published jointly by PHE / Joint Biosecurity Centre / NHS Test and Trace.