A short thread on vaccination data in lieu of the @IndependentSage data presentation today.
TL;DR Vaccine roll out still going well despite a slight slowdown. High proportions of older individuals receiving second doses.
With thanks as always to Bob Hawkins for his help.
After a slow-down over the Easter weekend vaccine delivery rebounded, but has slowed over all in comparison to pre-easter delivery rates.
As expected, the majority of doses being delivered now are second doses.
Looking at cumulative jabs given we can see how the the first doses delivery has slowed right down vaccinating just 1% of the adult population in the latest week compared to 4% in previous weeks.
Second dose delivery is still going strong though.
Wales now has the highest first dose coverage of any home nation at 62.5% of the adult population and there is a gap opening up to Northern Ireland at 55.5%.
But all home nations are doing well (England 59.1% Scotland 58.9%).
Wales is also surging ahead with second dose coverage having given a second dose to 21.3% of it's adults. The other home nations are a but further behind at around 15% each.
Just looking at England now.
75% of over 80s and 52% of 75-79 year-olds have received their second dose.
This is great news for the enhanced and continued protection of of our most vulnerable age demographics.
Still a little way to go until we reach first dose levels of vaccination at 95% in over 80s.
At 75%, second doses are much higher than where first doses were 12 weeks ago (59%) indicating that we are keeping pace with first dose roll out.
Looking at coverage by English region, we can see that London still has the lowest coverage rates of any region across all age ranges.
Worth interpreting this in context with this thread by @chrischirp on vaccine equity in England.
Overall a good and improving picture.
Vaccine delivery has slowed down slightly, as we had expected, and switched largely to second doses, but some first doses are still being given and over 45s are now being invited to book their appointments.
\ENDS
Short 🧵 on case data.
This week sees a big milestone:
All UK Local Authorities have fewer than 100 cases per 100K (7-day rolling average).
TL:DR Generally cases continue to fall in most regions and in most age-ranges, but that doesn't mean this will continue as we open up.
1/9
Cases (per 100K) continue to fall in all home nations. Bigger falls in England and Scotland, smaller in Wales and NI.
All nations are now below 40 per 100K.
Still some way to go before we get back to September levels, but good news.
Cases have fallen in al regions.
Although Yorks & Humber remains the highest cases continue to fall there.
North West nearly back to its (albeit highest of all regions) September level. Some others getting close but others still some way off.
A short thread on case positivity data.
Overall case positivity has continued to fall across all regions and in the majority of local authorities.
Lets hope positivity rates continue to fall after this latest round of opening up.
All home nations are continuing to show falls in positivity and are now well below the 5% threshold recommended by the WHO.
Similarly positivity continues to fall in all English regions and all are now below 3%.
Yorkshire and the Humber continuing to be a bit of an outlier, but positivity is coming down nevertheless.
At the end of last week it was reported by the Telegraph that we would achieve herd immunity today (Monday 12/04/21).
There are a number of reasons I don't believe this to be a helpful headline.
Perhaps most importantly, telling people we have reached herd immunity will give people the impression that it is safe to open up completely and infections will still decline.
It's not hard to imagine that this may have a detrimental effect on behaviour and compliance.
Talking about herd immunity as "all or nothing" is not particularly helpful either.
Generally as immunity builds up in the population it slows the spread.
Even when spread starts to decline, if R stays close to one then lots of people may still get infected as cases come down.
Herd immunity is an incredibly important concept. It suggests diseases can be eliminated without everyone having immunity.
If you want to eliminate an established disease then herd immunity is the way to do it.
1/10
It's important to note that people can gain immunity in two different ways. Through being infected and recovering with immunity or through being vaccinated.
Hard to believe it needs to be said but, the best way for people to get immunity is through vaccination.
2/10
When enough people have immunity for the reproduction number to go below one the disease will start to decline.
This level of immunity is often called the herd immunity threshold or the critical immunisation threshold.
No @IndependentSage briefing today, but I don't want anyone to go into withdrawal though lack of data so here's a short thread on cases and positivity rates.
Overall it's good news.
Positivity rates low and falling or flat across all nations and most of local authorities.
Cases per 100K per week have plateaued for Scotland, England and Northern Ireland with slight falls in Wales.
This is good news, especially after some slight rises previously.
Positivity rates look even more encouraging.
All nations are well below the 5% threshold and continuing to decrease week on week.