Map reveals Covid rates dropping across England – as major study warns lockdown having NO IMPACT
MORE data has suggested Covid cases have fallen in recent weeks – since England was plunged into a third national lockdown.
The stats from Public Health England show cases fell in all but five local authorities last week.
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The interactive map above, which can be viewed in this link here, is based on PHE’s weekly Flu and Covid-19 report, and shows the difference in infection rates in week 1 (4-10) and week 2 (11-17) of January.
While infection rates rose in Plymouth, Solihull, Shropshire, Leicester and Barnsley, across the rest of England it appears we might be turning the tide.
But it comes as another major study warned that Covid rates have only levelled off since the third lockdown began on January 6 – and could be rising slightly.
The REACT study, carried out by scientists at Imperial College London, swabbed 143,000 people in the ten days from January 6 to 15.
It shows around one in 63 people now have the virus across England – while London was the worst hit with one in 36 people infected/
Their findings showed Covid cases “were not dropping in the first 10 days of lockdown”, which started on January 5, and prompted suggestions that the current restrictions might not be tough enough.
The Imperial study is thought to show the most up-to-date data because it sends random swab tests to households across the country.
As a result it picks up asymptomatic infections – which are thought to affect one in three people with Covid – as well as very early infections.
In contrast, the PHE data relies on positive PCR test results from people who have had symptoms.
When you develop symptoms, it can take a few days to get a test and receive the results, which means a positive result as seen in the PHE data, can be a few days behind data from studies like Imperial’s.
The PHE data reveals positive test results were falling drastically across England when compared to “week 1” – January 2 to 10.
Cases grew by no more than six per cent in each of these places, meaning there were no significant hikes anywhere in England.
Meanwhile, the largest decreases in cases were recorded in Brighton and Hove, Barking and Dagenham, Bexley and Isle of Wight.
Looking at regional data, London saw the biggest drop in cases of 27 per cent, followed by the East (24 per cent) and South East (22 per cent) – which were the first areas to go into Tier 4 before the lockdown.
There was no region that saw an increase in cases in the seven days to January 17.
The report suggests that there were fewer people exposed to – or catching – the coronavirus in the first week of January.
‘No evidence for declining cases’
However, this largely contradicts the results of a shocking government-funded study led by Imperial College London, published last night, that went as far as claiming lockdown was not working.
The REACT study swabbed 143,000 people for coronavirus in the community in the ten days January 6 to 15.
Researchers then extrapolate the findings to say how many people had the virus in that week.
Because the study swabbed random people, it picked up asymptomatic cases as well as those who had symptoms – unlike PHE data which is only people who have symptoms and come forward for a test.
The findings revealed that Covid cases “were not dropping in the first 10 days of lockdown”, which started on January 5.
A record 1.58 per cent of participants had the coronavirus in that time period, and there was “no evidence of decline” in infections.
It pours cold water on PHE’s data which only looks at people with symptoms – who only account for around two-thirds of Covid cases.
Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics, The Open University, said there are “sometimes issues” with using confirmed cases to measure the crisis.
“Nobody can be counted as a confirmed case unless they have had a positive test for the virus, and so the number of confirmed cases depends on how many people are tested, which in turn depends on why people are asking for tests,” he said.
However, for REACT a representative sample of the community population in England is tested for current infection, regardless of whether they have symptoms.
But there were some holes in the theory that cases have not declined – and Prof McConway said there is still “a strong possibility the REACT estimates are not very accurate”.
The research team compared the swabs from January to late November, reporting cases had jumped up by 74 per cent between the two time periods.
But the researchers acknowledged they missed a whole months’ worth of infections between the two swabbing rounds, which would have shown a “peak” in December.
Had they done this, it may have shown that although cases were higher in January than in November, they were declining compared to December.
Is lockdown working?
Professor Paul Elliot, who is leading the REACT study, suggested the current measures crippling the lives of everyone may not be strict enough to curb infections.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We’re in a position where the levels are high and are not falling now within the period of this current lockdown.”
“We’re seeing this levelling off, it’s not going up, but we’re not seeing the decline that we really need to see given the pressure on the NHS from the current very high levels of the virus in the population.”
Prof Elliot said the current R rate – which represents how many people an infected person will pass the virus on to – was “around 1”.
The Government’s official estimate for the R rate is 1.2 to 1.3. It must be below 1 in order for the outbreak to shrink.
The Government said the REACT study does not yet take full account of the current lockdown measures, which have only been in place for two weeks.
However, Steven Riley, professor of infectious disease dynamics at Imperial, told Times Radio the study had examined a long enough time period to assess the current lockdown.
“It’s long enough that, were the lockdown working effectively, we would certainly have hoped to have seen a decline,” he said.
Scientists have previously said the effects of lockdown are not seen until two or three weeks after it is implemented.
The people who were exposed to the virus in the first few days of January – and perhaps before Christmas – would still be coming forward for testing in mid-January, due to the delay in symptoms appearing.
And, some experts say driving people into their homes can cause infections to spike.
Daivd Strain, a clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter, told The Sun: “In London where there a much more smaller households, lockdown put people into their homes, allowed those with Covid for it to develop and be admitted [to hospital] and those without it to stay safe at home.
“Two weeks ago (around 8/9th Jan) would be the peak of new diagnoses after the lockdown, with last weekend being the peak of admissions and next weekend being the peak of deaths.”
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In other parts of the country, the numbers of new cases peaked last weekend, Dr Strain said, due to “bigger family units, less restrictions pre lockdown and later arrival of the new variant”.
The REACT study also looked at mobility data from participants’ Facebook, which gives an idea of how much people are travelling around.
It showed a drop in the last two weeks of 2020, followed by a rise in the first week of 2021.
Prof McConway said: “Perhaps people really were staying at home more over the Christmas and New Year break, despite the fears about too much travel and family meetings that could increase infection, and perhaps mobility increased again at the start of the year as people went back to work after the holidays.”