Thread by @chrischirp

THREAD: where are we with Covid in the UK?

Read on and find out... (16.5 tweets)

TLDR: Everything mostly going in right direction, but caution needed and some warning signs on horizon...

@IndependentSage

Firstly, cases are continuing to come down in Scotland, NI and England. This is good. Welsh cases have gone up a bit over last 2 weeks tho, a few weeks after their firebreak ended, since when they've had fewest restrictions in UK.

Note that...

...Some of increase is cos Wales is testing more (GOOD) but some is more transmission, as seen in recent (small) increase in positivity rates from case data *and* ONS infection survey.

Coming out of restrictions is hard, & Wales adding some tonight. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-…

Looking at Scotland by restriction Levels is interesting. 2 weeks after highest regions went into Lvl 4 (sim to England lockdown) quicker reduction there. Everywhere else flattish for last 4 weeks. Is Scotland happy to be stable over Xmas at lowest UK rates?

For England, it's v relevant as Scottish Levels 1-3 are very similar to the new tiers 1-3. If England follows Scottish experience, perhaps post lockdown we will stabilise rather than continue reducing. (see later tweet).

Looking at English regions, all regions are now steadily decreasing. This is seen in positivity rates too although there, London, SE & East seem to have flattened off in last few days.

Because people who will become reported cases over next week or so are mosly infected already, expect cases to continue to fall this week. Might well get under 10K cases in England by next Friday...

NOTE the lines are not a fitted model or prediction! just back of envelope calc

Middle December situation onwards depends on how new tiers work. If we are like Scotland, might see cases stabilise. But 10K a day is still *high* (where we were beginning Oct), esp coming into Xmas. Hopefully cases will keep reducing - esp in tier 3.

Hospitalisations coming down in all nations and all English regions. GOOD.

Deaths continued to increase to 20th Nov (deaths registered with Covid) & in England looks like we are now about to start declining (GOOD).

In SAGE minutes released last week, they concluded that the old tier 3 was effective in reducing cases, old tier 2 slowed growth but less good at reversing it and that tier 1 had little impact. (caveat: correlation, not causation). NI lockdown v effective.

Although all English regions have reducing cases, esp many new tier 3 regions, the number of people *in hospital* in North remains high. I imagine part of reason many places in new tier 3 is to try to drive hospital numbers down much lower.

What else can help as England emerges from Lockdown? Better contact tracing of course!! We called for reform during lockdown. Didn't happen, *but* test and trace is getting quicker (GOOD) but not reaching more cases (BAD).

and *then* mass testing which was trialed 1st in Liverpool is now making its away across country. Last 2 days has been about 10% of tests conducted. Results of mass testing need to be reported separately from symptomatic tests!

This is because otherwise we won't know if future rising case numbers are because of more transmission or more testing. Positivity rates will also be v hard to interpret! We will need to rely on hospital admissions mainly which is a lagging indicator... concerning!

So to sum up, don't expect big changes in trajectories over next week. Keep an eye on Wales... And next week I'll see how Europe doing after lockdown and US after Thanksgiving... END

PS for the PDF of today's presentation, an updated vaccine statement and an updated universities statement check out our website! independentsage.org