Thread by @JamesWard73

A bit of a mixed bag in today’s case data. The good news is in children, where the trend of recent days (stalling growth) continues:

And if we look into the detail, we can see weekly growth rates heading very slightly negative in all three school-age groups (although that last day will get revised up a bit, it does suggest we’re about at the peak of cases).

I note that (as @BristOliver mentions here) there’s a risk that the Immensa problems in the South West are now causing the growth to appear lower than the true underlying trend – so we should watch this closely over the coming days.

https://twitter.com/BristOliver/status/1451934273607503884?s=20

But with half term about to start, I’d still expect some actual case reductions in those groups over the next week. If that does happen, I’d hope that case rates in 40-60s (which have been elevated) will also come down, as teens stop infecting their parents to the same extent.

The bad news is in the older age groups, where the 80+ seem to have found a new level, settling at about 10% weekly growth. That’s better than the 40% we had a week or so ago, but anything above zero is too high, as it will inevitably feed through into hospitalisations.

So if we want this to come down further, and to work into reducing cases in the 60-80s as well, we still need to get a booster rocket into that booster rollout. We are not out of these woods yet. /end