Thread by @WillHayCardiff

How likely is Wales to go into lockdown?

Let's have a talk about what is happening with Wales' Covid figures because there is a hell of a lot going on behind the headline sky rocketing cases.

[Thread]

At the start of September modellers thought that cases would peak and start to come down around the start of October.

This proved true as you can see from this graph.

However after dropping until October 3, they swiftly bounced back.

So why did this happen?

Well there are two likely reasons (neither of which are mutually exclusive).

The first is the massive cock up at the Immensa testing lab in Wolverhampton which may have given at least 43,000 people an incorrect negative Covid test result.

We don't know exactly how many people in Wales were affected by this but it could have had a number of effects.

The first is that it could have directly increased the levels of Covid in Wales.

Loads of people walking around with Covid while thinking they were fine could obviously have driven up the infection rate.

There is still some provisional (but by no means conclusive) evidence that this may have happened.

We know that some areas that didn't send tests to that lab are still seeing cases go down, and we know that samples went there from areas that were going down and are now going up.

The other way the lab error could have affected the data is by keeping loads of positive cases out of the system.

If this did happen then perhaps cases never went down at all at the end of September and we are still just in an extended peak.

Modellers are currently trying to work out how many positive cases were missed

To do this they are looking at the positivity rates for other labs.

If the Welsh average was 15% test positivity in other labs and only 10% in the Immensa then it may be possible to give an approximation of how many positive cases were missed.

Or maybe the whole testing mess up has had no effect at all. Maybe the reason for the increase is down to reduced compliance (fewer people wearing masks or isolating with symptoms etc).

We may see some change in the figures over the next few days. There may be a slight slowing infection in the latest data but it is hard to tell because of the delays in PHW publishing.

Either way the big question is will this lead to a lockdown?

Well it seems pretty unlikely at this point.

The reason to go into a lockdown is if there is increasing hospital pressure.

At the moment hospital admissions are at the same level as they were on September 10. Not good. But not yet catastrophic.

A big part of this is that the bulk of cases are in young people - who are less likely to need hospital treatment anyway.

So in conclusion:

- Don't be too disheartened that your going to be asked to lockdown.

- Get a jab.

- Wear a mask for gods sake.

- Read my article below where I speak to actual experts about this.

walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-new…