UKH

JVT showed some graphs today which showed infection rates rising in all age groups except 10-19 and 20-29.

I was initially thinking this might be showing some sort of decline but I’ve just had a horrible thought.

What if the rates are dropping because young people tend to only get mild symptoms and maybe they’re not reporting the symptoms anymore for fear of having to quarantine and potentially making their whole uni house quarantine? This is an example, equally there could be parents ignoring their small children having a seemingly minor cold.

This would certainly explain the rates rising in the other generations.

I hope I’m wrong but it’s a scary thought.

20-29?

Lots of those people need to go to work to get paid.

If you want people to stay at home, you need to support them to do so. 

It's more than just the money. If you're the person not turning up for 2 weeks because it turns out you had the sniffles (not MEGAGIGAHYPERPLAGUE2.0) then who's first out the door when the job cuts come?

It's a bunfight out there. People are scared.

Please take the above ramblings for what they are. A man who's evening has been ruined by the felling of a tree he never physically saw.

(Not that kind of saw)

I think you might be right WM 

Stay safe,

BB.

The more hopeful option is it ripped through freshers' week and has since slowed as they're quarantined and into lectures.

I suspect it's both, possible also coupled with still having to drive 5hrs for a test if you want one.

jk

Why do they use these maddening age ranges that in no way correspond to school and university ages?  Madness.

I’m cautiously assuming that this is the end of a burst of cases caused by the mass geographic movement of students to universities and the sub-standard freshers accommodation at some with tiny rooms, shared toilet/shower and kitchen facilities and so on.

If that burst is ending the big question is “why?” - herd immunity in the isolated sub-populations (hallway “households” or institutions)?  Better enforcement/compliance?  People avoiding tests as they are a hassle to get to without a car and they have to isolate anyway as someone on their slum corridor has it?  Some potentially really important information waiting to be quantified from the fresher cohorts...

Half of England's secondary schools have sent kids home with Covid or to isolate because one or more of the kids have Covid.  

I'm not sure I believe the figures.  

I think university towns have walk through testing.  

I have had a few people out on site tell me that unless they are on deaths door they will be at work because they either can't live on statutory sick or are self employed. 

The flip side of this is I pay my guys full sick pay and since they came back from Furlough (on full pay) I have been down 1/10 of my workforce at the best and and 1/6th at the worse. 

At some point if this carries on I will need to cut the sick pay because paying out numbers like we do is not sustainable long term but if I don't there is a greater chance of someone coming in with it and maybe taking us all down. Its a real problem. 

No one has yet had covid either. 

I think there is some flattening in the areas that have been under strict hospitality restrictions for the longest (just under/over 3 weeks), ie the NE and Liverpool. It makes sense that the flattening is seen in younger age groups because they use those things the most. This is borne out by looking at recent weekly changes in local authority rates in those regions, including for those authorities without any students. However I agree that the size of overall change in the national figure must surely be driven largely by a turn down in the student rate. 

I doubt it is a problem with reduced testing. There may be some reluctance, but there has also been an effort to concentrate testing facilities in very high risk areas that should help compensate. In Sefton there are now three different walk-in centres and a drive through centre with hundreds of appointments, so no-one is going to be more than a 10-15 minute drive from one and most people could walk. That's a massive change on only 2 weeks ago.

So I'm optimistic the trend is real. The bit I still don't believe is the rate in young kids being so low. I think they just don't always display the same symptoms. I'd be interested to see if the test positivity rate is high or low for this group.

Edit to say that if the reduction at younger ages proves to hold, there is still a huge challenge in preventing transmission from those groups to older age groups. I don't think many people realise how bad it has been up here. The infection rate is definitely worse now than the March peak in the area and as of today, Stephen Powys predicted last night that Liverpool City Hospitals would reach the same number of Covid hospitalisations as at the April peak. Anecdotally, I met no-one with Covid in spring but have been aware of several in recent weeks.  So we need to turn it around and fast.

Another edit to say that of course the improved availability of testing won't have shown in the figures yet - that was getting ahead of myself. We need to wait a fortnight to see if the rate reduction holds and what the combined effects of testing availability and Tier 3 regs are. I'm still feeling more optimistic than a few days ago though.

Yes I agree, we’re down in the South East and we’re seeing more more infections than in the first wave. 
My wife works in a school and there have been 3 classes isolating so far, one due to a teacher catching it from a birthday party she went to.

On Saturday I was talking to the owner of a medium-sized building company about Covid. He remarked that initially it was an issue (self isolation, track and trace) but recently there has not been a problem. The company collates test results (+ve or -ve) and initially employees were collectively reporting around 20 tests being taken a month. Now it is 0. The threat of £10,000 fines, utter confusion as to what is and isn't permitted and the ramifications of track and trace means that people are simply not getting tested - it's just easier not to. 

Time will tell if this is representative of the wider picture.

I don’t think they’re always very close to all student residences though - especially in bigger cities where the students can live miles away on public transport etc.

Are they self-isolating anyway? If not then this is not going to end well!

What exactly are parents supposed to do if their child has a minor cold? Just to be clear, and this is really a case of ignorance, the symptoms of a cold are not the same as CV. If your child has a cold and you ring up for a CV test you will be told to go away. Schools have been at pains to tell parents to still sent their children to school if they have a cold.

When our children have colds there is enough snot to fill a swimming pool, the symptoms are obvious. Sometime around end of Feb/early March both our children got snot-less fevers - we isolated for 14 days.

The predictable fall in cases in Manchester (City Council area, where most of the students are) over the last week is being touted as cases falling across Greater Manchester.

They are rising significantly in 8 of the 10 districts, the only other one to see a fall is Trafford and that is very small.

Tories going to Tory.

They are totally incapable of appreciating they need to be generous with money.   The flip side of fines and asking people to isolate - especially people who don't feel ill - has to be making sure they are OK financially if they do.

£10k fines are completely counter-productive if they just provide an incentive not to be tested.

Doesn't mean they're actually available though. We have an out of town drive through and a walk in (a uni' public health partnership, not exclusively for students). A couple of my mates had to drive to Lincoln and back for a test, a 4hr round trip, that was a couple of weeks back: basically freshers' week. I can see why people don't bother.

jk

It's a recurring trend since the early days that when one area surges ahead of others, it dominates the plot of cases; then when control measures kick in to that area to make R~1, its high and flat or falling case level masks the earlier stage exponential rises going on elsewhere.  This could be the effect of China on global data or a single borough containing a university on it's county data.  My general feeling is that initial surging area ends up lost in the noise as everywhere else catches up - it's a canary going down the mine.

You really do have to drill into the lowest geographical and demographic units to understand the details.  Our whole county is having its numbers dominated by one university, but cases are still rising elsewhere in the county.  Now that university is nudging 8% of students with confirmed cases their risk control measures are starting to get a stick as well as a carrot...   

University cases are massively underreported. Real life example: flat of 12 all in quarantine. 4 with symptoms, only 1 bothered to get the test. As soon as the first got the test, the rest were locked down anyway, why would they bother getting an inconvenient test? Soonest available was Tuesday in any case, after symptoms started previous Thursday. Same scenario will be repeated in multiple flats.

I'm not sure that's still the case with early closing, table service and limited numbers, I doubt pubs and bars hold much appeal for the young at the moment. It's middle aged folk using them round here (not a very studenty area though).

The interesting questions here are is it infections or 'cases' that are down in that age group, in either case why and does it even matter? It seems the problem has spread anyway now so the 'will it stay contained on campus' question is answered and sadly it's a no.

That's good but it is probably creating blind spots elsewhere as resources are reallocated, it's unlikely to be all new capacity given the struggles we've had getting even basic nationwide coverage.

The ONS (random sample) data has prevalence in young kids broadly similar to the rest of the population excluding teens-students. It does look like under-testing of small children in the Pillar II numbers, presumably because they don't present much differently with or without covid potentially coupled with concerns over the cost and stigma of getting a whole class sent home (I'm not condoning that but I can understand it).

jk

Thought I had whilst walking passed a drive through self test facility, is there was no apparent monitoring of the test actually being done. The car driver collected whatever number of test kits, then moved to a separate area for the testing part, and them drove to the exit to put the tests in a container.

All the cars I passed had more than one person in the vehicle. I’m sure there must be many ways therefore for those who wish for whatever reason to get a negative test to manipulate the test when it’s not supervised at all? 
Anecdotally, I believe the swab should be taken well within the nose/throat and can involve gagging. Are self test reliable with say a cursory wipe?

Just curious, I’m sure most folks will try their best to do a test.
 

Yes, they gave us a flow chart to help with that.

Basically you compare their symptoms to the list of Covid symptoms if they don't match up you act as normal. If it's just a sniffle and you'd normally send them to school then carry on. 

If they have any Covid symptoms then they stay at home and you get them tested.