Has the Wales lockdown been effective?

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Removed User 08 Nov 2020

I've been finding it very difficult to get any data on Wales, re numbers of new cases, tests, hospital admissions. From what I can gather things seem to be levelling off but have not yet fallen and lockdown ends tomorrow.

That doesn't sound great to me. Surely in March we saw a fall in cases in less than a fortnight after lockdown?

1
 mrphilipoldham 08 Nov 2020
In reply to Removed User:

Cases still rising in many places, stable in a few and falling in a few others. 
 

https://twitter.com/ukcovid19stats/status/1325483690596704256?s=21

 mik82 08 Nov 2020
In reply to Removed User:

We're probably not going to know for a week or two. Cases have tailed off in the past few days. Numbers in hospital are at a similar level to the April peak.

Wales is actually a lot more open with its data than England. All kinds of stats and charts available via Public Health Wales.

https://public.tableau.com/profile/public.health.wales.health.protection#!/...

Edit - and the regulations following the lockdown are still pretty strict - no-one from outside your extended household to visit your house or garden. (extended household can be you plus one other household if living alone etc.) You can't meet indoors with people outside your extended household, and only up to 4 meeting outside. No foreign travel. 

Post edited at 20:28
gezebo 08 Nov 2020
In reply to Removed User:

As said we won’t know for a little while but apart from supermarkets having bits blocked off I’ve noticed very little difference in the volume of traffic after the first few days. I even went to England last week- work related!! And saw one police car doing speed checks and I’d travelled from Anglesey to near Crewe and back. It’ll be more interesting to see how the English one works in my opinion as cases in much of north Wales were very low overall anyway. 

 Welsh Kate 08 Nov 2020
In reply to gezebo:

Apparently there have been some police checks on people travelling into England from Wales down here in the south, I guess they'll be doing some in the other direction from tomorrow.

 Dave the Rave 08 Nov 2020
In reply to mik82:

Hmmm. The media published data doesn’t compare with what we get sent at work in our health board. 
Last week there were 16 pts being directly treated for COVID and 2 admissions with non conclusive results.

Up until June, there were always 50-60 being directly treated? 
How can this be?

Removed User 08 Nov 2020
In reply to mik82:

Thanks.

Yes, looking at the charts page there has been a very sharp drop in confirmed cases over the last few days.

Good on Wales for grasping the nettle.

 wynaptomos 08 Nov 2020
In reply to Removed User:

I’ve been following this site collated by a 16 year old lad from Aberystwyth

https://coronaviruscymru.wales

He’s been providing an excellent summary on here and twitter thoughout the epidemic.

As others are saying, the figures in many areas are still very high but just starting to move in a more positive direction last few days. Still early days in terms of the efficacy of the lockdown.

 mik82 08 Nov 2020
In reply to Dave the Rave:

I was assuming this was the same as the internal data (available on the Covid-19 datahub if you have access to that)

Post edited at 21:33
 Dave the Rave 08 Nov 2020
In reply to mik82:

I don’t sorry mik. We just get daily hospital updates from the Heath-board meeting.

Maybe we are mushrooms. Fed shit and kept in the dark

 Si dH 09 Nov 2020
In reply to Removed User:

I'm a bit late to the party on this but to my eyes the data at Miks link doesn't show a significant reduction. The numbers are just low for the two days immediately prior to the data date, which is always the case.

This is either (1) an indication that lockdown isn't working well or (2) an indication that the lag between changing policy and seeing a measurable change in infection rate in government data is at least a fortnight.

Unless I missed something? I just looked at the daily case data.

Have to say I find the government dashboard more user friendly than that link and it's also updated daily, whereas the cases data in the link was last updated 7th Nov.

Post edited at 12:57
 kedvenc72 09 Nov 2020
In reply to Si dH:

Are we looking at the same graphs? The graph I see shows it falling to 8 cases on saturday, down from 64 on friday, 521 on thursday and 1000 on weds. The previous weeks remain fairly constant at around 1000. This seems to be an extermely significant drop and at a level comparable to the time perios of july to start of september. Am I missing something?

Post edited at 13:59
 Si dH 09 Nov 2020
In reply to kedvenc72:

Correct - for the data reported on Sunday. This always happens because very few cases are reported in the data the day after a test. To be reliable you need to look back at least 3-5 days. You can't see a reliable trend for a Wednesday-Saturday period until the following Tuesday, Wednesday or even Thursday depending how well the testing programme is working that week.

Post edited at 14:08
 kedvenc72 09 Nov 2020
In reply to Si dH:

and the data for those dates is updated post-hoc as more becomes available?

 Si dH 09 Nov 2020
In reply to kedvenc72:

Yes, but it is normally all in after a few days.

You get an indication by looking at the new cases reported on the data date, which in the bar chart are dark blue.

I'm not arguing lockdowns don't work by the way, I just don't think the data is yet mature enough to see the effect of the firebreak in Wales.

 jkarran 09 Nov 2020
In reply to Removed User:

> Yes, looking at the charts page there has been a very sharp drop in confirmed cases over the last few days.

I can't see a way to roll the graph back to see it as it was on any given day meaning I can't estimate what the normal case reporting lag looks like but it's likely much of the most recent tailing off is just weekend effect compounding the normal reporting backlog. Still, there is a measured drop and it seems to have been sustained since late Oct (partly hidden in the severe weekend glitches) so it looks like Wales might start the new softer regime at 500-750 detected cases/day. Not ideal but better than had they done nothing different. It looks like 2 weeks of moderate-lockdown isn't enough to buy much time under lighter-touch winter restrictions before the next is needed.

jk

Post edited at 14:33
 daftdazza 09 Nov 2020

latest Zoe data suggest cases peaked at end of October for Wales with a decrease observed through November which is extremely positive, Scotland also doing great backed up in recent hospital data, and interesting England likely to have peaked and started to fall prior to second lockdown.

Off course this is just from one source, will be interesting to see if ONS backs this up over coming weeks.

https://mobile.twitter.com/timspector/status/1325470926226513922

I am happy for Wales, the ease in restrictions seem to be significant improvement in life for many.

 Dave the Rave 09 Nov 2020
In reply to mik82:

Thanks for the email mik82, but I can’t give out my works email address, even on UKC email.

Sorry if the email was genuine. Stay safe.

Post edited at 21:18
 Dave the Rave 10 Nov 2020
In reply to Dave the Rave:

Just to confirm that mik is a genuine user and not phishing etc.

Thanks for the public link mik.


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