Thread by @andrewflood

#Covid19Ireland positive swab data for yesterday & today a concern but slightly better than end of last week
462 +swabs Sunday was 116% last Sunday
380 today is 104% last Monday
Were it not for vaccine rollout accelerating this would be a problem within a couple of months /1

Average of 451 pos swabs over last 3 days is 114% same days last week. That projects as
513 wk1 - May 3rd
583 wk2
663 wk3
754 wk4
857 wk5
974 wk6 - June 7th
1108 wk7
1259 wk8
1432 wk9
/2

There was a small increase in testing across both days however as the north is demonstrating more tests does not mean more cases in any linear way - their testing increased 180% on previous week today but cases detected were 90%

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1386671476946911238?s=20

/3

A reasonable conclusion is that infections are again growing with R above 1 but so far not that much above 1. As long as vaccinations continue to accelerate as planned & further openings are cautious we should start to see vaccination impact on growth in a couple of weeks /4

But pay attention to the north, they are almost at 50% dose 1 vaccination and even with most measures still in place are only seeing slow reduction in cases. You need very high (80%+) vaccination rates to avoid this - still a couple for months in our future /5

We are in the process of working through the 'vulnerable period ahead' discussed at length in this thread

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1351866736551874562?s=20

Update on the walk in testing - that the positivity is higher than the average days this isn’t really ‘asymptomatic’ testing - follow up on positives after 1st week found 50% were symptomatic, 40% close contacts

https://twitter.com/RobOHanrahan/status/1386692193088380930

Todays 437 cases added to the March 31st 'Vulnerable Period Ahead' plot. Almost 26k vaccination doses reported from Saturday which is good as the 42 day VPA time period assumed a somewhat faster vaccination rate & 22 days into it the gap needs to be closed in the next 10 days /7

Overview of the latest all Ireland stats and then the ones for the south off my Facebook page (I seldom remember to also post here) /8