Thread by @ADMBriggs

And most recent T&T data, 11/3 to 17/3. 🧵

- More testing
- Fewer cases
- And the numbers of non-household close contacts is rising again.

This week, just a short thread to pull out main points.

gov.uk/government/pub…

Small increase in number of people tested but rise of 1.3m in number of LFDs used, driven by secondary schools.

And case rates generally still falling, except among school age children

https://twitter.com/ADMBriggs/status/1375209614459998208?s=20

For contact tracing, of the 33,266 cases passed to T&T, 90% were reached and 84% - 25,016 cases - gave details of close contacts.

The percentage reached is similar to previous weeks, but the percentage of cases providing details of contacts is climbing.

And not only is the total number of contacts rising as a result, but so is the average number of contacts per case - now 3.3 up from 2.7 last week and the highest since the end of Sept.

The % of these contacts reached has fallen slightly.

This is solely because a greater proportion of contacts are not from same household as case (the drop off is striking).

And in fact, the percentage of contacts reach for either HH or non-HH are both *better* this week.

This will be due to more mixing, primarily in schools, but unfortunately there isn't a breakdown of contacts by age/setting to understand this more.

It's really great that people are choosing to report contacts, but more contacts inevitably means more potential for transmission.

As more close contacts not from same HH, end-to-end time from case taking test to contact being reached is slightly longer.

But end-to-end time for symptomatic cases falling.

This suggests much of ⬆️in non-HH contacts may be from asymptomatic testing - which is what you'd hope.

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