Thread by @IndependentSage

1/ Presentation of the week’s figures from @chrischirp. Some positive signs but a lot of regional variation. Coming out of restrictions will be hard

2/ Hospital admissions: sustained decreases in NI & Scotland, Wales plateauing. In England we saw a slowdown end of Oct/start of Nov, then a rapid increase and it’s now (just) starting to reduce again.

3/ High admissions have meant numbers of people in hospital are continuing to go up and we aren’t that far from April peak. Hopefully if admissions keep dropping, these numbers will start to come down soon which will be important for NHS

4/ Deaths with Covid-19 on death certificate are still doubling every two weeks, but this is up to Nov 6 only. Daily reported deaths in England are flat, probably because hospital admissions plateaued briefly 2 weeks ago. Deaths should start to come down in a week or 2

5/ Moving on to cases now, we are using data based on when someone *took* a test, not when the result was reported. Although this means we can only look up to 5 days ago, it’s easier to spot responses to restrictions that way

6/ Although Scotland as a whole has been flat since mid-Oct, there is a lot of regional variation. Level 4 areas have much higher positivity rates but are (slowly) coming down. Should see decrease accelerate with new level 4 restrictions

7/ Northern Ireland had its circuit breaker in the middle of October - it’s still in lockdown but schools open. Steep decline in cases now levelling off but ONS reports positivity rates are still coming down (GOOD)

8/ Wales had its firebreak end of October. Cases there are coming down and continuing to fall (GOOD) but need to keep an eye on what happens now firebreak is over

9/ Finally England. Cases to 14th Nov are still going up, but it looks as though this is because we are testing more as positivity rates are stable (PHE & ONS data). North West & Yorkshire coming down, but everywhere else is still going up.

10/ Nothing has changed with England’s Test & Trace. There is no sign that the system is being improved during lockdown to help us remove restrictions safely. This is BAD

11/ EU context: France, Netherlands, Belgium, Czech Rep & Ireland all did national lockdowns & you can see steep consistent decreases, esp. for Czech Rep & Belgium where they closed schools. For some, cases started declining before lockdown (hospitality was already closed)

12/ Some countries are reducing cases without lockdown (Spain, Switzerland) & others are flattening cases (Germany, Italy). Looking closely at other countries and what is working and not working will help us plan next steps and tailor interventions

13/ The recent spike in England was most likely due to pre-lockdown socialising. Decreases in England need to speed up over next 2 weeks. Direction of travel in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland v. important as restrictions are adjusted within nations