Friday May 1st






  • The UK Government continue to regard themselves as having led a successful campaign against the virus
  • This despite all the evidence suggesting otherwise
  • The death rate continues to rise, whilst the PM tells us that the peak has been reached
  • Meanwhile, there are now over 3 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide
  • In the UK there are 171,253 confirmed cases
  • But, this excludes all the people who have not been tested and have the virus
  • In particular this means that older people in care homes, those most at risk of dying, are not being counted
  • And, in case we forget (the media have moved on) despite the claps and the charity singles health workers continue to work without adequate PPE
  • And the result of this is that more and more of them are contracting the virus and a small but significant number of them are dying






The UK government, under some pressure, has finally agreed to include all deaths in the daily totals. UK total yesterday was 26,771, an increase of 692.




Although the FT is still estimating the figure as being much higher, the key statistic may well be the fact that the UK has 14.7% of al the deaths worldwide, a figure which is still moving upwards and which has now reached 235,187.

And, what of testing?


Tests carried out UK
Total tests carried out    901,905 
  in last 24 hours83,366
How many less than Governments target16,634
People tested687,369
Negative (n/%)75
Positive (n/%)25
  average per day since first death12,274
Percent population UK tested1.04%

So it seems that the Government has reached its target of 100,000 although that figure was not reflected in yesterday's figures. Does it matter?

It only matters if you think that a certain number of tests is significant. The fact is that the more people tested the better idea we have epidemiologically in the way the virus is moving through the population. 

Given that only just over 1% of the population have been tested, and that we have no data on reinfection of those who had previously tested negative, there is a big black hole in our knowledge.

And, why does this matter? Because any eventual easing of the lockdown is reliant upon the R figure being below 1. But, without extensive testing that figure is purely speculative. Although the Government are claiming that it is now below 1, they actually have no way of knowing. Any more than they could be certain that it was 2.6 (the UCL estimate) previously.

There's a lot of analysis out there, but this article by David Adam in Nature magazine does a good job of explaining the way in which modelling has been used to drive Government policy.



That's it for me for this week. Have a good weekend. Stay safe and keep your distance.








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuesday April 28th

Image
Panorama exposes Government failings over Covid-19 PM says other countries could learn from the UK ONS  figures suggest at least 22% of deaths not in official figures Leaked report shows that Government were warned of pandemic and chose to ignore it  Over 3 million people worldwide have the virus It is likely that over 27,000 people in the UK have died from Covid-19 "Current success"? - this is the way the Tories are spinning their undoubted mishandling of the crisis. From ignoring their own Operation Cygnus recommendations to invest in PPE, to following a herd immunity strategy when no vaccine was available, to seemingly not quite understanding that The WHO is an international health organisation not a past-its-best rock group, everything the Government has done points to major inadequacies in their preparation and approach. Under normal circumstances being incompetent in Government is serious and it can cost lives, but on this occasion having advance war
Read more

Tuesday May 5th

Image
It seems highly likely that the UK lockdown will be eased this coming weekend. There is little in the way of agreement about what exactly this will mean. 12 countries - including Germany, Spain, Greece, Belgium, Lithuania, France, Nigeria and Lebanon - started to ease their lockdowns yesterday. In most countries this was to promote economic growth, but only some stores and industries were allowed to open. In Germany the easing of restrictions included allowing hairdressers and barbers to open. Both the infection rate (counted by positive tests for those who can get them) and deaths (where Covid-19 is included on the death certificate) continue to rise. As of yesterday, there were 28,734 deaths and 190,584 positive tests. Date Days since first death 04/05/2020 60 Deaths   UK (All deaths) 28,734 New deaths (official) 288 Death Rate (hospital deaths) 15.08 Increase in deaths over previous day (%) 1.0 Tests carried out UK Total tests carried out      
Read more