Saturday 11th April

Quote of the day

"I had the completely wrong attitude. I would not say I was hugging strangers or anything like that, I think I just underestimated the real impact of it.  I had the perspective that because I was young it would not affect me, that it would be like a kind of flu."

Calum Wishart, 25, who is recovering from Covid-19 

Headlines:

• There have now been 105,722 deaths from Covid-19 worldwide
• There are now 1,727,602 confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide
• UK figures continue to rise with 980 new deaths yesterday, higher than any daily death toll in either Italy or Spain
• There have now been 8,958 deaths from the virus in the UK
• 52% of deaths in the UK have occurred in the past 7 days
• Testing is increasing and yesterday reached 22,184 a new high, but this still only accounts for 0.39% of the population
• It is possible, though not inevitable, that the UK is heading for a final death toll of over 50,000 and that the peak will not be reached until May at the earliest
• The UK lockdown has been extended
• The Government claims that PPE is now reaching NHS workers has been contradicted on social media by doctors and nurses who state that they are sill being put at risk due to inadequate protection

UK Stats

Date	Days since first death		Weekly comparison figures
10/04/2020	36
Deaths	8,958		4,645	deaths in the past week
New deaths	980		52	% of deaths in the past week
Death Rate	12.15
Increase in deaths over previous day (%)	12.3
Total tests carried out	265,605		82,415	people tested in the past week
Negative (n/%)	191,847	72%	-36	% negative tests
Positive (n/%)	73,758	28%	76	% more positive tests
Percent population UK tested	0.39%		0.12	of the population tested since last week

4 Nations

	Cases	Increase in cases over prevous day (%)	Deaths	New deaths	Percentage increase in deaths over previous day
England	58,817	8	8,114	866	12
Scotland	5,275	6	447	81	22
Wales	4,591	12	315	29	10
N. ireland	1,589	2	82	4	5

English Regions

	Total confirmed cases	Increase over previous day (%)
London	16,011	28.41
South East	7,304	12.96
South West	2,747	4.87
North West	8,021	14.23
East	4,872	8.64
Midlandss	9,704	17.22
North East/Yorkshire	7,703	13.67

Wales

Total confirmed cases	4591
New Cases	502
Tests carried out	17804
% of population tested	0.57
Positive tests	7192
% pos tests	40.40
Deaths	315
Death rate (as % of pos tests)	4.38
Local authority cases
Blaenau Gwent	145
Caerphilly	337
Torfaen	143
Monmouthshire	483
Newport	203
Anglesey	18
Conwy	36
Denbighshire	74
Flintshire	90
Gwynedd	37
Wrexham	75
Cardiff	875
Vale of Glamorgan	267
Bridgend	172
Merthyr Tydfil	102
Rhondda Cynon Taff	454
Camarthenshire	209
Ceredigion	26
Pembrokeshire	79
Powys	69
Neath Port Talbot	202
Swansea	406

Likely peak date

This is the point at which infections and/or deaths start to fall. Once we get to the halfway point of the infections/deaths it is likely that the curve will start to come down.

The midpoint, hence the peak date is incredibly difficult to calculate given how much we don't know.

Reproductive rate (R0) is the number of infections that each infected person passes on. A R0 above 1 means that each person infects more than one other person. It is not clear how many people this is, though most estimates range from 1.5-3.5. However, whatever figure it is the other unknown is how many people each newly infected person will infect and how many repeat infections will occur before the virus stops spreading.

I have calculated a figure based on R1 and R2, but have not gone further. Imperial College don't say how many R's they use in their calculations (unless I missed it).

these are my best guesses using the data available.

Known cases (positive tests)	73,758
Known deaths (of positive cases)	8,958
Death rate (Known deaths / Known cases)	12.15
Transmission rates (all positive cases in population)
R0 (1.5)	110,637	165,956
R0 (2.6)	191,771	498,604
R0 (3.5)	258,153	903,536
Likely death rates. Assuming:		R2	R1 Likely peak date (half of total deaths reached)	R2 Likely peak date (half of total deaths reached)
High transmission/Low death rate (0.86%)	2,220	7,770	11/03/2020	13/03/2020
Low transmission/Medium death rate (3%)	4,204	6,306	12/03/2020	13/03/2020
Low transmission/High death rate (12.15%)	13,437	20,156	16/03/2020	20/03/2020
Medium transmission/Medium death rate (3%)	7,287	18,947	13/03/2020	19/03/2020
Medium transmission/High death rate (12.15%)	23,291	60,556	21/03/2020	09/04/2020
High transmission/Medium death rate (3%)	9,810	34,334	15/03/2020	27/03/2020
High transmission/High death rate (12.15%)	31,353	109,736	25/03/2020	04/05/2020

In the case of R1 most of these numbers have already been passed and the figure keeps rising. In the case of R2 almost all the dates for peak have already passed which suggests that we are at least looking at R3. This means that for each person initially infected a further round of people were infected and that round infected another round. This means that for every person infected prior to the lockdown a further 3-8 people were infected. If, say, 10,000 people were initially infected and continued to circulate meeting and infecting others, the number of infected people could be 33,750 - 78,750. 

In this scenario between 1/4 million and 3 million people will be infected, most of them already carrying the virus.

The World Health Organisation calculates that the death rate of those infected is around 3.8%.

In such a scenario the death rate in the UK could be anywhere from 9,459 (assuming R=1.5), 49,262 (assuming R=2.6) up to 120,170 (assuming R=3.5).

We are already close to the first figure, and still moving toward the second. We do not know how much the lockdown has prevented the transmission of the virus and therefore arrested the reproduction rate. 

Warning: all these figures are highly speculative as so much is unknown. They are used purely as a rough guide to what might happen. The actual situation could be worse than this, or hopefully, better.