Corona Virus
A series of write ups on the virus
Coronavirus Tracking, School opening, and Care homes
24/05/2020
School opening
If progressive countries like Denmark can be
teaching children and have them back in schools, then so should
we. The whole point about being a teacher is you love your job.
It is a mission, a vocation, to be able to excite young minds.
Michael Gove
Denmark began to open schools progressively on April 15th. At
that time they had had 309 deaths total and were recording
around 180 new cases per day. Deaths were around 10 per
day.
The UK's population is about 11 times greater tahn Denmark's so
our equivalent would be 110 deaths per day.
We are currently sitting at around 400 deaths per day, and at
the current growth rate (or R rate) will not reach Denmarks
levels until early July.
By comparison, New Zealand opened the schools on 18th
May with no deaths for 12 days, and only 45 cases country wide.
With an extremely extensive testing and tracking regime, South
Korea opened its schools when infections
were down to under 30 per day.
Greece also waited until infections
were down to around 20 per day.
Maybe Gove is right. Maybe the other countries are
being ultra cautious. The UK certainly cannot be accused
of that.
It is a huge risk. If there are any carriers in
schools, then in that location the spread could approach the
pre-lockdown values before anyone find out about it. I
track the deaths, the government tracks the test data. But
there seems to be no plans for routine testing of children or
staff at schools. If anyone develops symptoms then they can book
a test, but the results can take days, or even weeks to come
back. Pre - lockdown the spread was 30% per day - or cases
doubling every 3 days. Any cases in schools will have increased
by a factor of 4 before anyone knows about it.
If we must start schools so early then teachers, staff and
children, and their immediate family should all be tested (and
of course proved negative) before they start school. And
temperature tests done on the way into school every day. That
way the government's test figures will be ahead of the death
figures and we will be able to take appropriate action.
This is an obvious but, given the government's record to date,
unlikely practice.
Care home deaths
I track the care home deaths by taking the official death
figures from the
governments figures and sibtract the "deaths in
hospitals" figure from the "deaths in all
settings, not just in hospitals" figure. The figures are quite
horrendous showing lmost 7,000 deaths so far, from a total care
home population of 418,000. But my figure (the governments
official figure) looks like in may be a severe under-estimate.
On May 15, 2020, the
UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) released provisional
figures on deaths involving COVID-19 in the care sector in
England and Wales.
From March 2 to May 1,
2020, COVID-19 was confirmed or suspected in the deaths of
12 526 individuals living in care homes in the two nations.
Worrying as these figures
are, they only capture official notifications; when taking
account of excess mortality, the situation appears even worse.
In an average year, the care sector in England and Wales sees
roughly 20 000 fewer deaths during March and April than have
been recorded in 2020.
The Lancet
So real figures are at least 12,000 and probably around
20,000.
Deaths in the UK in general per million people is about 530. In
a care homes then the number rises to 47,847. Those in
care homes are almost 100 times more likely to die from covid-19
then the general population.
Sadly, the death rate is are not reducing in carehomes and these
figure are a major contributor to the UKs overally figures.
Using my R value estimate:-
Location |
R value |
UK Hospital deaths |
0.43 |
UK Care home deaths |
1.25 |
UK overall |
0.69 |
Tracking
In the graphs below I have changed the units for growth so that
0% instead of 100% represents steady state with neither growth
or reduction.
The spike in Spain's figures is due to a large number of
previously unrecorded deaths being added to the stats on a
single day.
The UK's hospital death rate, which is probably indicative of
the country outside of care homes shows a reduction on death
rate better than the other countries including
Scotland and Wales which indicates the England's
is even lower.
This is a good sign, unless you live in a care home.

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Covid Articles
15/01/2021
There is light
11/01/20211
A new year begins
02/01/2020
A good thing?
31/12/2020
The Year ends in Tiers
21/12/2020
A worrying Trend
13/12/2020
Two weeks of Tiers
30/11/2020
Ending Lockdown
16/11/2020
Mid lock down
26/10/2020
October
8/10/2020
Long Covid
28/9/2020
September3
0/8/2020
August roundup
10/08/2020
Englands data
31/07/2020
July roundup
29/07/2020
Spain Data Manipulation II
20/07/2020
How far are we behind
12/07/2020
It progresses
04/07/2020
The flood gates open
27/06/2020
State of the Nations
21/06/2020
Exit and Testing1
4/06/2020
Hindsight and Foresight#
07/06/2020
Tracking and general comment
05/06/2020
Spain Data Manipulation
5/06/2020
UK Data Manipulation
24/05/2020
Tracking, school opening and care homes.
17/05/2020
Tracking and comparison with Germany
10/05/2020
Tracking and comparison with other countries
7/05/2020
Tracking
7/05/2020
Clarification
03/5/2020
Exiting Part 1
01/05/2020
Statistics
01/04/2020
First Thoughts |