Welcome signs that case numbers and case rates are falling both in PHE data & ONS survey
Not going to disentangle positivity rates here, mass/lateral flow testing is in pillar 2, many will have confirmatory PCRs, & ideally symptomatic vs asymptomatic would be reported separately
And these falling case rates are across ALL age groups and ALL regions.
Although when you look in more detail at the regional data, you can see that in some regions (e.g. SE, London), rates among some older age groups still look to be rising
And the NW/NE no longer completely dominate, with high rates in SE
(worth noting ONS data by age is pretty consistent with this, but by region, ONS suggest that community rates in NE and East Mids may still be going up)
Rates also falling across all ethnicities and deprivation groups (except for more deprived 10-16y/os), but inequalities remain.
No real change in number of outbreaks in care homes or schools. There are still a lot of them, but a relief to see that they're not rising after last week's jump.
This is also the first week in the past 2.5 months that there's been a drop in total hospital admission rates.
But this is driven by falls in North and East Midlands. Admissions still rising across the South
Also overall fall in ITU admissions driven by drops in NE and NW. But worrying rise in the Midlands, est West Mids where admission rates haven't yet started to fall.
And death rates (with their 3-4 week lag following infection) still continue to trend up (note recent deaths are not included), and excess mortality remains high.
Here the North does still dominate. But hopefully this will start to fall soon.
Still very little flu (just three admissions and three cases identified through the national surveillance programme).
And flu vaccine uptake whilst low among pregnant women (may be a data error here), it's already higher than last yr for over 65yrs and yr 2 and 3 children. 🙌
So in general, this is pretty good news.
National restrictions from 2-3 wks ago, plus all the local measures (COVID secure teams, schools teams, comms, local contact tracing etc) seem to have had a role.
But case rates, hospitalisation rates & death rates remain relatively very high, plus there's big geographic variation.
Interesting that number of individuals tested down by 1% this week (although that's still 1.74m people).
This includes the lateral flow devices being used in Liverpool and some other settings (reported in pillar 2).
Cases fell for the first time since mid-August. Down 9% to 152,660, and positivity also down. This is consistent with PHE data today, as well as ONS survey.
12% increase in people getting tested which is good (now 1.74m in a week(!)), but note from 6th Nov, pillar 2 now includes people having the rapid lateral flow tests (e.g. Liverpool pilot) and this will only increase in numbers.
The knock-on impact is lower P2 positivity rates.
The implications of this is that it makes it far harder to interpret positivity rates, esp if you don't separate out test device, or asymptomatic vs symptomatic testing.
Latest PHE flu & COVID surveillance report, up to 15th Nov.
- ⬆️Case rates in over 70yrs.
- ⬆️hospitalisations, ICU admissions & deaths.
- Big variation by region, ethnicity, age, and deprivation.
- (+ some good news on flu & flu jabs)
Confirmed cases of COVID plateaued this week, and positivity rates dropping.
Still probably a little early to see results of 6th Nov restrictions, but local restrictions likely important. And new use of lateral flow tests (pillar 2) may be contributing to lower positivity rates.
And case rates falling across most aged but crucially NOT among age 70yrs+
Irrespective of the fact that 50,000 of 5,000,000 is 1% rather than 0.1%, here's a v short selection of data that might help to clarify some of the differences between flu and COVID-19.