The 9am figures not disclosed yet?

It looks like we may be seeing a drop off in deaths now as well as new cases. I was expecting a bigger number today after the long weekend, and the oft late reporting that goes with that. If numbers are correct there is a definite drop in deaths, and has been for 4 days now. Good news at last, possibly
 
The last two weeks Tue-Fri have had the increasing number of deaths before a fall back on Sat-Mon.
Although released today, these are yesterday's/day after the long weekend figures.

Having said all that, if we are under 800 tomorrow then it does look like hospital deaths have peaked.
 
Presumably if the deaths are levelling then the admissions must either be staying at the same level or hopefully reducing? I wondered if anybody at a local hospital had any idea of the current trend?
 
newusername said:
The last two weeks Tue-Fri have had the increasing number of deaths before a fall back on Sat-Mon.
Although released today, these are yesterday's/day after the long weekend figures.

Having said all that, if we are under 800 tomorrow then it does look like hospital deaths have peaked.
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There is some other, tentative, data to support a claim that we might have peaked. Firstly, previous weekends, whilst reporting lower new deaths than on weekdays have, with one day's exception, still seen a growth in the 4-day average for deaths (albeit growing at a smaller rate). This weekend, however, has seen a day-to-day decrease in that average, which has then continued into the first working day afterwards.

If we examine NHS England data (which is only available from 2nd April), the previous weekend saw a marked fall in reported deaths by 5pm on Sunday 5th April (403) which was immediately followed by a spike in the number by 5pm Monday 7th April (758). That was an 88% increase on a day-to-day basis. If we compare the numbers by 5pm on Sunday 12th April (667) and 5pm on Monday 13th April (Easter Monday - 744), with the number announced by 5pm on Tuesday 14th April (651), we can see that the number has actually fallen, despite the assumed administrative delay in reporting numbers over a (bank holiday) weekend.

The 4-day average for new infections is also encouraging. Over the past four days, this average has been broadly flat. However, if you strip out the NHS workers tested (i.e. only count those tested in hospital), the 4-day average for new infections has actually decreased for each of the past four days and seven of the past ten days.

All of the above indicators look and feel different to our experience in the past few weeks. Therefore, and I'm certainly not 'calling it' at the moment, there would appear to be more evidence to support a 'peaked' hypothesis rather than a 'not yet peaked' hypothesis.

That said, as I've mentioned on this thread previously, even if we have peaked, the evidence from other countries would suggest that this is a long way from the end of the pandemic and perhaps not even halfway through it. I will post some further analysis on that point later today.
 
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Hospital deaths in England so far 51.5% were over 80, 40% over 60 & 7.5% over 40. If you start adding in care homes those %s are going to skew even further.

If we have peaked there is surely a case for giving it at most a couple of weeks and then on the 5th May people under 40 returning to work & probably the u60s as well, spending our time & resources protecting the vulnerable rather than continuing a country wide shutdown.
 
newusername said:
Hospital deaths in England so far 51.5% were over 80, 40% over 60 & 7.5% over 40. If you start adding in care homes those %s are going to skew even further.

If we have peaked there is surely a case for giving it at most a couple of weeks and then on the 5th May people under 40 returning to work & probably the u60s as well, spending our time & resources protecting the vulnerable rather than continuing a country wide shutdown.
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The question is how? We have not been very good at keeping the infections out of care homes to date. Some care homes have got live-in for workers to isolate them, but there are about a million home visits a day into people's homes. These workers will mix with the population as a whole.
 
bear66 said:
The question is how? We have not been very good at keeping the infections out of care homes to date. Some care homes have got live-in for workers to isolate them, but there are about a million home visits a day into people's homes. These workers will mix with the population as a whole.
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It does depend on the care home, not all care homes have had cases. Possibly they've been lucky & others have been unlucky, but if you've trailed round these places they don't all provide a uniform level of care.

So I'd start looking at what the ones with zero cases have done, & what the hot spots like the place in Stanley Co Durham have done. What are the differences & roll out that best practice sector wide.
 
newusername said:
It does depend on the care home, not all care homes have had cases. Possibly they've been lucky & others have been unlucky, but if you've trailed round these places they don't all provide a uniform level of care.

So I'd start looking at what the ones with zero cases have done, & what the hot spots like the place in Stanley Co Durham have done. What are the differences & roll out that best practice sector wide.
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On BBC now; St Ives care home where a discharge from hospital brought it to the home. Hancock has now said all discharges will be tested prior to release to care homes. That will hopefully be a big help. There's still a half to two thirds of care homes free of it (care home providers / Scotland figures) so hopefully they stay that way. Most elderly are in their homes receiving care from providers. It would be interesting to find out how much transmission is taking place that way. Not sure how though.
 
I said I would post some analysis of other countries' experiences post-peak. As mentioned previously, I'm not saying for definite that we have peaked, but the main indicators are positive and, even if we haven't quite reached it, the consensus would seem to be that we will do so in the coming days.

So what does a post-peak world look like? The best examples that we have are Italy and Spain.

The first thing I should say is that I haven't had chance to update my figures for Italy and Spain today. Secondly, and more importantly, I don't measure the peak as being a specific day. As individual days can vary from one another, leading to outliers within a general trend, I use the 4-days which showed the highest average during that period.

In Italy, using that measure, new infections peaked during the period 26th-29th March when the average daily infection rate was 5,826. As there have been 16 days since that period (in my analysis), if we go back 16 days from the peak we can see there were 70,440 infections at a daily average of 4,403. The 16 days since the peak have seen a further 64,799 infections at a daily average of 4,050 (8.0% lower).

Spain is even more pronounced, where new infections peaked between 30th March-2nd April, when the average rate was 7,989. The 12 days before the peak period saw 73,187 infections at an average daily rate of 6,099. The 12 days following the peak have seen 61,955 further infections at a daily average of 5,166 (15.3% lower).

So, there is reasonable evidence (albeit limited to a sample of two countries) that we could expect to see a marked fall in our daily infection rate once the peak has been confirmed (it may have occured between 8th-11th April but too early to confirm yet). Of course, the UK testing data has been made more complicated by the inclusion of tests for NHS staff in recent days, but it is still possible to strip this out to make a like-for-like comparison.

If we now turn to new deaths, unfortunately we see an entirely different picture. In Italy, new deaths peaked between 27th-30th March when the average daily death rate was 844. The 15 days before the peak had seen 8,118 deaths at a daily average of 541. The 15 days following this peak have witnessed 9,476 deaths at a daily average of 632 (16.8% higher).

Spain shows a similar, but slightly lower, effect. New deaths peaked between 30th March-2nd April (same as new infections), when the average daily death rate was 886. The 12 days before the peak saw 7,078 deaths at a daily average of 590. The 12 days following the peak saw 7,907 deaths at a daily average of 659 (11.7% higher).

Therefore, the available evidence would suggest that the death rate falls much less steeply than the infection rate. This lends some credence to the University of Washington model (although not the actual projections) which suggested that we will see more deaths after the peak than we experienced before it. In other words, the curve for new deaths has a long tail.

Of course, the health warning that I need to add is that we are not bound to follow the experiences of Italy and Spain. Thus far, however, we have followed Italy's trajectory quite closely and have actually been tracking above them for a couple of weeks.
 
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As of 9am on 16 April,417,649 tests have concluded, with 18,665 tests carried out on 15 April.

327,608 people have been tested, of whom 103,093 tested positive.

As of 5pm on 15 April, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 13,729 have died.

About 4.5% new infections and possibly record number of tests. It sounded from the CMO that things might have been worse today so hopefully 'good news'.
 
Today's headline analysis:

• 4,618 new infections in 24-hour period, virtually unchanged from yesterday's 4,605
• 4-day average for new infections decreases by 3.4% having decreased marginally by 0.1% yesterday (it has been broadly falling for five consecutive days)
• 861 new deaths reported in 24-hour period, up from 761 yesterday
• 4-day average for new deaths increases by 4.1%, following 5.0% decrease yesterday and four consecutive days of decreases previously
• We continue to track above Italy on a days since 20th death basis. We have followed broadly the same trajectory for the past 32 days and have been tracking above Italy for the past 15 days.
• We are approximately 13 days behind Italy’s numbers (from 13.5 days behind yesterday)
 
Important note regarding the above - despite the rise in deaths reported in the 24 hours to 5pm yesterday, that rise was insufficient to increase the 4-day average for new deaths above its current peak during the period 7th-10th April. As this rise has been partially attributed to reporting delays following the bank holiday weekend, this is perhaps further evidence that the peak may have been reached.
 
As of 9am on 17 April, 438,991 tests have concluded, with 21,328 tests carried out on 16 April.

341,551 people have been tested, of whom 108,692 tested positive.

As of 5pm on 16 April, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 14,576 have died.

Smashed the tests record and but a slight increase with 5.8% new infections.
 
Today's headline analysis:

• 5,599 new infections in 24-hour period, virtually up from yesterday's 4,618
• 4-day average for new infections increases by 6.7% having decreased by 3.4% yesterday (and having broadly fallen for the previous five days)
• 847 new deaths reported in 24-hour period, down slightly from 861 yesterday
• 4-day average for new deaths increases by 4.2%, following 4.1% increase yesterday
• We continue to track above Italy on a days since 20th death basis. We have followed broadly the same trajectory for the past 33 days and have been tracking above Italy for the past 16 days.
• We are approximately 13 days behind Italy’s numbers (same as yesterday)
 
Notes on the above - the increase in positive tests may well be driven by the increasing number of overall tests. Therefore, this may be due to higher number of positive tests for NHS workers than by those requiring hospitalisation.

We have been tracking above Italy on a days since 20th death basis for over two weeks. If we remain on the current trajectory and Spain continue to see improving numbers, we would overtake Spain (currently highest in Europe) in 10 days' time.
 
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