Virus, vaccines, and variants. My heatmaps for cases, positivity, hospitalizations, ICU admissions in England.

New this week - charts for vaccine takeup and variants.

Vaccines - good; variants - concerning. We need to ensure that we use the data before unlocking further.
All charts this week start from the start of the vaccine rollout and show the (very severe) third wave.
Detected cases.

Increasing in 10-19 year olds (likely due to lateral flow testing in schools).

Increasing in 5-9 year olds. These are not routinely given lateral flow tests.

Other ages - rates decreasing.
Same chart as above - monochrome verion
Positivity - Males & Positivity - Females

Reductions except slight rise in 10-19 year olds.

There is low positivity in 10-19s due to mass lateral flow testing.
Hospitalizations

Very encouraging decreases in hospitalizations
ICU/HDU Admissions

Very encouraging decreases in most age groups.

65-74 ICU/HDU admissions have increased this week.
New Heatmap: Vaccine Takeup

Excellent takeup (first doses) for 70+.

Note however that there remain several hundred thousand unvaccinated over 70s who may be vulnerable.

Totals increasing for under-70s.

Totals: 39% given first doses; 3% given second doses.
New Chart: Vaccine Variants

This is an issue for Test 4 of the unlocking Roadmap

Significant increase (from a relatively low level) for P1 (Manaus) variant (red); B1.351 (S Africa) (purple) increasing. Some cases detected by surge testing

This is 'data' in 'data not dates'
Here is my @skynews interview with @SkyNewsIsabel setting out the data that will inform further steps in the roadmap out of lockdown.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Dr Duncan Robertson

Dr Duncan Robertson Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Dr_D_Robertson

18 Mar
Public Health England @PHE_uk have published the update for variants of concern and variants under investigation. Note that these are cases detected (and that these may be detected as the result of surge testing).

Rises in VUI B.1.525 (+26 since Tuesday) & VUI B1.1.318 (+10)
Here is the data table (data from @PHE_uk). Note B.1.1.7 is excluded in the chart above. To emphasise, these are the result of non-uniform testing and sequencing.
Description of variants (from @PHE_uk):

The VOC-20DEC-01 variant was first detected in the UK and was first sequenced in the UK in September 2020.

The VOC-20DEC-02 variant was first detected in South Africa and was first sequenced in the UK in December 2020.
Read 8 tweets
24 Feb
Public Health England @PHE_uk have published a report on prevalence of Covid in the university student population.

A very short thread.

Publication here:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
They find that fewer than 1 in 5 students (17.8%) had antibodies at the end of the Autumn term (which imples that more than 80% were susceptible to Covid).

"SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in 2,905 university students was 17.8% (95%CI, 16.5-19.3) ..."
"... ranging between 7.6%-29.7% across the five universities" (the universities are not named - 'University A' to 'University E')
Read 6 tweets
22 Feb
The Government's roadmap for reopening has been published.

I will add commentary as I read through.

From first glance, there are no numbers for thresholds, which does in some way question the notion of 'data not dates'.

There are however a lot of dates in the document.
The roadmap itself is only 15 pages long.
It sets out 'principles'
- whole of England rather than regional response
- "led by data not dates" (see above)
- five weeks between steps - 'no earlier than'
- face-to-face education a priority
Read 17 tweets
22 Feb
Today the Prime Minister will announce the roadmap out of lockdown. A short thread.
First of all, a reprise of previous attempts at coming out of lockdown. They haven't gone well.

So, what is the plan for release of lockdown this time? At the moment, this is what we have to go on.

We are told this is "cautious"
gov.uk/government/new…
Read 13 tweets
21 Feb
On the face of it, this does seem to be more weighted to dates rather than data.

It will be interesting to see if *any* quantitative thresholds for cases, hospitalizations, or pressure on hospitals are set out on Monday, or whether the only thing that are set are dates.
It is obviously a risk, I'd reports are correct, to send all school children back on the same date. One critical thing missing is the ability to adapt. If R exceeds 1 and hospitalizations increase as a result of this, all that can be done is to close face to face...
schooling with the effect this will have on children's continuity of education. It would be prudent to send *some* children back and see the effect before committing all children.

Remember, it is not just the interactions between children (which *could* be mitigated...
Read 6 tweets
18 Feb
Here are my heatmaps for cases, positivity, hospitalizations, and ICU admissions. This covers the period to 14 February 2021.

With commentary on a possible Covid vaccine effect in hospitalizations for 75-84 year olds. ImageImageImageImage
DETECTED CASES

Falling in all age groups. Falling fastest in 70+. Possible vaccine effect, but uncertain due to different testing regimes used.

Detected case rates over 100 per 100,000 in working age adults and over 80s. Image
Here is the monochrome version of the chart above. Image
Read 10 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!