In each of the previous two weeks there were an extra 36,000 reported cases of coronavirus in the UK – this week there were 33,000 new cases. That is the extent to which the spread of the virus is slowing down – not much!
The global reported deaths have recently passed 200,000 at the same time as the reported UK death count has passed 20,000. The UK has less than 1% of the world population but c10% of the coronavirus deaths.
The UK has the fifth-highest number of deaths of any country (behind USA, Italy, Spain and France) and, more telling I believe, is fifth in the list of deaths per capita ((ignoring San Marino and Andorra) behind Belgium, Spain, Italy and France).
I’m pretty sure we will climb further up both of those lists in the next week or so. I’m fairly sure of that based on the trajectories of the number of new cases in different countries. Let’s have a look at our three European former partners, Italy, Spain and France, who have similar numbers of deaths to the UK.
These are real, messy, no-doubt flawed data. But they are right up to date. In Italy, the daily new cases peaked at 5-6,000 cases in the week before we started our lockdown. The daily cases have fallen steadily and are now around 2,000/day. The graph looks very convincing as far as a fall in new cases is concerned.
In Spain, the number of new cases/day peak at around 8,000/day at the time that our lockdown started and has fallen convincingly, with blips, to around 3,000/day now.
In France, the new cases/day peaked at around 8,000/day some time in the first week in April but has fallen consistently since then with the latest figure being below 1000 cases/day and a run of days of around 2,000 cases/day.
And now the UK:
We reached 5,000 new cases/day at the beginning of April and we are still around 4-5,000 new cases/day today (or, in fact, yesterday; 4,463 new cases).
Spain, Italy and France all show clear and convincing drops in the number of new cases/day – the UK doesn’t (we show signs of a very slight drop, if one is fairly optimistic, but that’s it).
Spain, Italy and France, despite having similar total deaths (all a bit higher at the moment) to the UK (and higher deaths/capita population), have daily new cases at the rate of 1-2,000/day whereas the UK is maintaining a daily increase of 4-5,000 cases.
At the moment it looks as though lockdown is less effective in the UK than it has been in Spain, Italy and France – we should be thinking about that, hard.
I’d be loathe to reduce the stringency of lockdown in the UK until our graph of new cases/day looked very much like those of Italy, Spain and France, and that may take a week, or two weeks, or longer. At the moment, it looks a long way away. the argument might well be for greater stringency of lockdown for a while. And, of course, if we gave it a few weeks, by then, we would be able to see something of the consequences of easing lockdown in other countries.
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Thousands entering the country unchecked through airports every day since so called lockdown.
We must trust other countries more than our own.
Italy’s loosening of the restrictions now brings it to what we have at present……Spain is still way more stringent….take from that what you will.
The UK announced yesterday that screening and quarantining for 14 days of arrivals at ports and airports will commence next month…..
For a global perspective I strongly suggest the world service radio programme 5am to 7.30am weekdays…..Its a way better listen that that Today programme rubbish (although I do take 30 min out of the WS programme for the shipping forecast and Farming today). You can get it live at 5am where radio4 should be for 30 min, btu then you will need to go digital. Or of course, catch up online at a time to suit.
Here in France the Government seems to have been cobsistently clearer about what you are and aren’t allowed to d, including having to carry a signed statement about why you are out. Apparently there have been thousands of people fined for breaking the regulations.
@Roderick – and some quite juicy riots
On the comparative success failure of the lockdown – the italian health system basically collapsed whereas ours didn’t. That’s a big factor in the favour of how we dealt with it.
On comparing death rates many people think the death figures are a massive under accounting of the true number – quite a few of which may be due to other factors besides infection.
Mark, your comment ‘These are real, messy, no-doubt flawed data’ doesn’t really do justice to the UK government figures which only count those who die in hospital, whereas we know that, partly through government policy of not testing new admissions, many Covid-19 deaths have occurred in care homes. The Financial Times has an interesting couple of (free-to-read) articles looking at the number of excess deaths since the coronavirus outbreak in comparison with the previous 5 year average for the same period, both in the UK and in a number of other countries:
https://www.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab
https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c
This suggests that the number of UK deaths (directly and indirectly) due to coronavirus may be double the official figures.
Giles – in pointing up our ‘comparative success’ in protecting the NHS (although arguably not many of the doctors and nurses who work in the NHS) from collapse could I suggest that this is a fairly low bar for celebration? We had several weeks in advance of Italy to prepare. Why not compare us to Germany?
Francis – yes, I’ve seen those things. In looking at the course of the disease it is more important to look at comparable figures than attempt to get complete figures (particularly when the complete figures are delayed and unpredictably so). Obviously, underreporting of UK deaths merely makes us look beter than we are – and we look awful anyway!
But the point of that post was to highlight that our new cases/day aren’t falling very much, whereas those elsewhere are. And that point stands, and may be reinforced, by poor data from care homes.
@francis – yes it would be good to compare us to Germany too. Any such comparison should however be made. This far it certainly appears as though Germany has many fewer deaths for the number of cases it has. There are various reasons why this might be the case. They may be accounting for covid deaths differently – perhaps they don’t count people dieing WITH covid as a covid death but only if they die OF it. They may have a far superior health system to us. They may also have done a lot more testing so have found a lot more cases. I suspect they have done a far “better” job of suppressing the virus than we have. I put better in quotes because it is not necessarily “better” to suppress the infections too much because that just means that you get them over a longer period. A longer lockdown also has negative impacts. I note a report in the times that they are now having to tighten their lockdown because their cases are going up.
Something to be aware of when looking at the covid19 stats on Worldometer: comparing the UK number of new daily cases in early April with the number of new daily cases now is not comparing like with like.
The new daily case count is only ever part of the picture as many covid19 cases are not tested and therefore not recorded.
But as UK testing capacity has increased, e.g. making testing available to NHS workers, more mild cases have been recorded. So the late April figures include cases which would not have been recorded at all in early April.
In other words, as time goes by, more cases are being found, because more people are being tested.
You can see the breakdown in the slides and data available on the gov.uk website (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/slides-and-datasets-to-accompany-coronavirus-press-conferences). So as an example 5234 new cases on 11th April is made up of 4624 tested for medical need, 610 wider NHS and social care worker testing. On the 28th April, total 3996 new cases, the split is medical need 2455, wider testing 1541.
So while it is still very bad, if you compare like with like, i.e the medical need cases, there is a more significant drop in recent days. There is a bar chart in the government slides which shows this more clearly than I can!
Jayne – those are good points. Thank you.