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Today we saw more worrying data about the spread of the coronavirus in England.
Cases and deaths remained at the high levels seen last week, as did hospitalizations.
Across the country, the spread shows little sign of slowing down.
Weekly COVID-19 case rates across all regions of England
As before, the highest figures are in the Northwest, but the highest growth rates are found in other regions.
A useful indication of the status of the outbreak is the number of beds occupied by patients suffering from COVID-19.
In eastern England, that figure jumped from 295 to 454, a 55% increase.
In the southeast, it went from 325 to 528, an increase of 62%.
Large percentage increases don’t mean much when the absolute numbers are low; After all, if you go from 10 to 20 cases, you’ve had a 100% percentage increase.
But this suggests that the virus is now spreading across the country, even in regions where it had previously been low.
Weekly hospital admissions for coronavirus in all regions of England
Things are not as bad as in March: Thanks to continued social distancing, the doubling rate appears to be around two weeks.
In March, it was between 3 and 3.5, which meant that cases were roughly quadrupled each week.
Even if you take the estimate of Imperial REACT Study, which suggests that the doubling rate is nine days, you are still a bit far from the terribly steep growth of the peak of the pandemic.
Still, stopping the spread will not be easy.
So what about the measures the government has taken?
Clearly, Test and Trace in England is struggling.
For the third week in a row, official figures showed that it reached around 60% of contacts in England, far less than necessary if it is to restrict the virus effectively.
To its credit, Test and Trace is reaching more people each week, the problem is that the number of cases keeps increasing.
According to the most recent data from October 15 to 21, the service reached 0.6% more people than the previous week.
However, in the same week, cases transferred to the system increased by 25%; the enhancement is too small to stop the flow.
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So of course we have stricter restrictions.
It’s been two and a half weeks since Boris johnson introduced the three-tier system of coronavirus restrictions for England.
If they were going to make an impact, I would hope to start seeing it now.
Liverpool was the first city to enter level 3 lockdown – and, since the restrictions came in, their case rate has dropped significantly.
There are still many infections, even among older people, and Liverpool City Council warns of “widespread community transmission of the virus.”
However, the decline is now more than two weeks old and regional estimates of the R number place it below one.
Does this mean that the restrictions are working? The answer is complicated, because the cases in Liverpool started to decline before Level 3 was introduced.
But the Level 3 warning may have had the effect, and it seems likely that the measures have accelerated the decline.
Critics will argue that level constraints are reactive rather than proactive, thus invariably coming too late.
But it’s rare these days that things are heading in the right direction, amid a deluge of depressing data, we have to seize every ray of hope we can get.
