UK Covid alert level reduced to 3

[joncombe]

It has just been announced that the UK (just England? but the news story says UK) has just moved from alert level 4 to alert level 3. Alert level 3 has the comment "social distancing relaxed" so I'm hoping this means 1m rather than 2m.

Coronavirus: UK's Covid-19 alert level reduced from four to three

The virus is now "in general circulation" with a "gradual relaxation of restrictions" possible.

www.bbc.co.uk

The UK's coronavirus alert level has been downgraded from four to three, its chief medical officers have said.

Under level three, the virus is considered to be "in general circulation" and there could be a "gradual relaxation of restrictions".

The decision to reduce the alert level followed a recommendation by the Joint Biosecurity Centre, the chief medical officers for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland said.

 

[Huntergreed]

It has just been announced that the UK (just England? but the news story says UK) has just moved from alert level 4 to alert level 3. Alert level 3 has the comment "social distancing relaxed" so I'm hoping this means 1m rather than 2m.

To be fair, that doesn’t mean anything. The criteria for alert level 4 are:

Transmission is high or rising exponentially

Transmission has been at a similar level for a while, and the cases haven’t been rising exponentially for months, so I would argue we could’ve and should’ve moved to alert level 3 ages ago. The alert system is completely meaningless and serves only as another way to make the government appear as if they’re keeping the public “safe” when in fact they’re not showing the bigger picture and are measuring their success on one thing only (lowering death rate with Covid on the certificate) rather than the well-being of the country and economy, which is getting much worse every day.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Transmission has been at a similar level for a while, and the cases haven’t been rising exponentially for months, so I would argue we could’ve and should’ve moved to alert level 3 ages ago. The alert system is completely meaningless and serves only as another way to make the government appear as if they’re keeping the public “safe” when in fact they’re not showing the bigger picture and are measuring their success on one thing only (lowering death rate with Covid on the certificate) rather than the well-being of the country and economy, which is getting much worse every day.

Transmission is still high - cases have flatlined, so R is very near to 1. I think we were indeed not ready to move on that definition and should not have done so on those grounds.

It might be that the likely reduction in deaths from the treatment discovered is the reason why, but in that case that should be stated. They are hiding from uncomfortable truths, namely "we consider the current number of daily deaths to be tolerable given the circumstances, and so this treatment means we can loosen a little more i.e. reduce to 1m". If cases have flatlined in the last week or two, deaths will too in a few weeks. Hospital admissions (which follow cases by about 2 weeks) already are.

They are just not willing to have the necessary difficult but open conversations - yet we're willing to have them about road traffic which kills thousands a year. (Edit: about 1800, it seems, which is fewer than I thought - and the figure almost doesn't seem to vary at all year to year which is surprising!)

 

[Ianno87]

It has just been announced that the UK (just England? but the news story says UK) has just moved from alert level 4 to alert level 3. Alert level 3 has the comment "social distancing relaxed" so I'm hoping this means 1m rather than 2m.

No - it is "gradual relaxation of restrictions"; looks like there won't be anything significant until at least 4th July.

 

[BJames]

Excellent, about time. 4 was no longer an accurate description of the pandemic in this country.

This gives them more firm grounding to relax restrictions on the 4th July (one of which I'm still hoping will be 2m to 1m!).

 

[Domh245]

Transmission is still high - cases have flatlined, so R is very near to 1. I think we were indeed not ready to move on that definition and should not have done so on those grounds.

I'm not so sure that is the case. Taking the latest data on cases (up to the 17th), the number of new lab-confirmed cases by specimen date is showing a consistent exponential decay. I don't know if you're taking it on 'active' cases which may have flatlined but I can't find any data for that. The useful data (new cases) is showing that the virus is on the decline.

 

[BJames]

No - it is "gradual relaxation of restrictions"; looks like there won't be anything significant until at least 4th July.

Hopefully this secures the reduction of 2 metres to 1 metre on the 4th July.

 

[RomeoCharlie71]

I'm not so sure that is the case. Taking the latest data on cases (up to the 17th), the number of new lab-confirmed cases by specimen date is showing a consistent exponential decay. I don't know if you're taking it on 'active' cases which may have flatlined but I can't find any data for that. The useful data (new cases) is showing that the virus is on the decline.

<image snipped>

Screenshot taken from the 18 June Coronavirus briefing slides.

 

[Skymonster]

I've just seen that our alert level has been dropped down the Nandos peri-peri-ometer from level 4, to level 3.

Coronavirus: UK's Covid-19 alert level reduced from four to three

The virus is now "in general circulation" with a "gradual relaxation of restrictions" possible.

www.bbc.co.uk

The change in number is worthless without incumbent changes and loosening of restrictions. Unfortunately the weasel words associated with level 3 "gradual relaxation of restrictions" means the government is not obliged to do anything quantitative or within any specified timescale.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not so sure that is the case. Taking the latest data on cases (up to the 17th), the number of new lab-confirmed cases by specimen date is showing a consistent exponential decay. I don't know if you're taking it on 'active' cases which may have flatlined but I can't find any data for that. The useful data (new cases) is showing that the virus is on the decline.

I don't know whose data that is, but this is the officially published data from the daily briefing slides:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/893411/2020-06-18_COVID-19_Press_Conference_Slides_with_Annex.pdf

(the index is here: Slides, datasets and transcripts to accompany coronavirus press conferences - GOV.UK)



Which shows a very clear stagnation over the last week, and that it wouldn't take much for a slight uptick. Whereas the number of tests seems to be rumbling along at a constant level too. Essentially it would appear that the most recent loosenings plus related change in behaviour have stopped the decline (but not yet caused an increase). Definitely shows the time for further loosening is not now and that changing the alert level was highily negligent; to me it should clearly remain at 4 and we are not at all "progressing towards 3".

By the way your graph shows linear degradation, not exponential.

The Goverment may validly decide that loosening should happen regardless, but that should not be on the basis of what is a provable, outright, utter lie. Sorry, Mr Whitty, I respected you, but you have been bought; no doubt your job was under threat if you didn't fall into line.

 

[Domh245]

showing a consistent exponential decay

Things like the virus work exponentially - showing a standard graph like that has the effect of masking the progress (not to mention the effect of Y scaling on that graph!) - which is why I plotted it on a log scale (meaning the straight line is exponential decay!) to show that the decline is still there and in fact hasn't changed much since the peak. If there's an R rate of 0.8, that doesn't mean that each new case number decreases by 20% from the maximum each time around, but 20% from the current value. This continues until you start reaching small enough numbers that it breaks down, but if you've got multiple clusters across the UK this means it'll tend towards the number of clusters before then suddenly sputtering out

The other thing to mention about that graph from the briefings is that it seems to be the daily declared new cases, rather than the daily cases by date of testing, which is why there are a few spikes that almost hit 6k, whilst the data on samples by date shows no more than 4500 per day. This means that if samples from months ago which were only processed yesterday show up in yesterday's number - for example there were 7 cases declared yesterday from samples taken on the 23rd of April (and inversely, -8 samples from the 18th of April!)

The data is from the "latest cases data" csv from this page - for interest here's log (and non log) of the entire date range of the data set (change in 'Cumulative lab-confirmed cases')

 

[Bantamzen]

I don't know whose data that is, but this is the officially published data from the daily briefing slides:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/893411/2020-06-18_COVID-19_Press_Conference_Slides_with_Annex.pdf

(the index is here: Slides, datasets and transcripts to accompany coronavirus press conferences - GOV.UK)

View attachment 79714

Which shows a very clear stagnation over the last week, and that it wouldn't take much for a slight uptick. Whereas the number of tests seems to be rumbling along at a constant level too. Essentially it would appear that the most recent loosenings plus related change in behaviour have stopped the decline (but not yet caused an increase). Definitely shows the time for further loosening is not now and that changing the alert level was highily negligent; to me it should clearly remain at 4 and we are not at all "progressing towards 3".

By the way your graph shows linear degradation, not exponential.

The Goverment may validly decide that loosening should happen regardless, but that should not be on the basis of what is a provable, outright, utter lie. Sorry, Mr Whitty, I respected you, but you have been bought; no doubt your job was under threat if you didn't fall into line.

Its worth reading the briefing notes that accompany the data, there are explanations in there as to why the decision may have been made.

Health and Social Care Secretary's statement on coronavirus (COVID-19): 18 June 2020

Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock gave the 18 June 2020 daily press briefing on the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

www.gov.uk

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Downing Street daily coronavirus briefing.

I’m joined today by Baroness Dido Harding, the Executive Chair of NHS Test and Trace.

Before we start, I want to recognise the sad loss of Dame Vera Lynn. She united us in the worst crisis that this country faced. Ever since, she’s inspired us all with the words she will always be associated with: ‘we will meet again’.

We send our condolences to her family and we will all remember her warmly.

First things first, I’d like to take you through the latest data, then talk about NHS Test and Trace and vaccines.

First slide please.

The first slide shows that yesterday there were 136,516 tests, taking the total to 7-and-a-quarter million tests in total. There were 1,218 positive test results.

If we go to the next slide, this slide shows the estimated number of people who had COVID-19 in England according to ONS’s (Office for National Statistics) survey. As you can see, the number has been coming down over time. And this same survey implies around 4.5 thousand new cases per day.
Data from hospitals also shows that broad downward direction. There 490 admissions with COVID-19 on 15 June and, as we can see, the number of people on mechanical ventilator beds is 360.

The number of people in hospital continues to come down in almost every region. You can see a very small up-tick in the east of England. But, as you can see from the charts, there is some movement in the variation in each of the lines.

Overall movement continues to be down. Overall, 5,193 down from 5,863 this time last week.

Final slide of this group. When it comes to the number of people who have sadly died from coronavirus, yesterday the number of deaths reported was 135, bringing the total to 42,288. Again, we can see the downward trajectory, thankfully, of that number.

The number of 135 is lower than this time last week, but there’s still some way to go.

There’s one additional report that’s worth looking at.

Today’s weekly surveillance report from Public Health England shows that last week, for the first week since mid-March, the number of people who died in this country, in total, from coronavirus or anything else, was no higher than is normal at this time of year. So that demonstrates that the number of deaths is coming right down

But the battle against this virus is not over.

And it’s a battle with many fronts. And there are 2 areas that I want to update you about today.

All the data is also available within those slide indexes, I might have a dive in later.

Edit:

And just a very brief dive into the data shows a couple of interesting things around the feared second wave following last month's two bank holidays.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/893412/2020-06-18_COVID-19_Press_Conference_Data__2_.xlsx

At VE Day (08/05) the rolling 7 Day average number of new cases was 4,844
At VE Day +7 it was 3,621
At VE Day +14 it was 2,926
At VE Day +21 it was 2,142

At May Bank holiday (25/05) the rolling 7 Day average number of new cases was 2,540
At May BH +7 it was 1,993
At May BH +14 it was 1,575
At May BH +21 it was 1,313

So both these events which were cited as potential "super spreaders" & "second Wave events" seem to have had little or no negative impact on the rolling 7 day figures, even after 3 full weeks. And currently the average (as at 18/06) is down slightly more at 1,307. There has been a slight increase from a low average at 16/06 of 1,298 but overall it is neither here nor there.

So the trend is very much still on a downward slope, even though their appears to be a statistical flattening. The next big test will be in the coming 14-21 days worth of data, but the same datasets are estimating that the current rate of infected population is around 0.10%.

 

[jfollows]

Governments love these sorts of things ("alert level now 3") because it gives some impression of progress I guess, personally I loathe them because I find them meaningless. Perhaps it's just me, I'm one of these people who used to be sent on courses which came up with silly acronyms like "CRISTAL" and I just couldn't see the point because I can't for the life of me see how they make things easier to understand or remember. I also used to work on a government site (full of scientists, nothing special) and there was always a stupid sign saying something about the "threat level" and I just asked myself "yes, but what does it actually mean?" and couldn't answer my own question.

But it's probably just me, perhaps there is some value to some people in these things?

 

[yorkie]

Governments love these sorts of things ("alert level now 3") because it gives some impression of progress I guess, personally I loathe them because I find them meaningless. Perhaps it's just me, I'm one of these people who used to be sent on courses which came up with silly acronyms like "CRISTAL" and I just couldn't see the point because I can't for the life of me see how they make things easier to understand or remember. I also used to work on a government site (full of scientists, nothing special) and there was always a stupid sign saying something about the "threat level" and I just asked myself "yes, but what does it actually mean?" and couldn't answer my own question.

But it's probably just me, perhaps there is some value to some people in these things?

The point is there has to be relaxations at some point; these levels are the catalyst for that.

 

[MikeWM]

But it's probably just me, perhaps there is some value to some people in these things?

The terrorist alert level seems entirely meaningless to anything I do or wouldn't do in everyday life, so I generally agree. The only place I've ever seen it mentioned in a public place was outside the naval base in Portsmouth.

I suppose if the COVID equivalent is used as some sort of justification for loosening restrictions, it has some minor amount of use, and *will* at least have some indirect impact on what I am allowed to do.

As far as I can see, however, we're still a bit high. We should have been at '3' for a while, and now seem to be currently somewhere between '2' and '3'.

 

[Mag_seven]

Mr Whitty, I respected you, but you have been bought; no doubt your job was under threat if you didn't fall into line.

The decision to move from level 4 to level 3 was made by the chief medical officers of all four nations. Were all their jobs under threat?

 

[Bletchleyite]

The point is there has to be relaxations at some point; these levels are the catalyst for that.

Yes, but I still don't believe they bear themselves out in the actual data. So how about a bit of honesty? "We're relaxing restrictions because if we don't the economy is going to tank and we will have a lost generation of children, but we do accept there is some risk that this could cause more growth of cases, so please continue to take the utmost care in your daily life".

Problem is, lying demonstrably wins votes.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The decision to move from level 4 to level 3 was made by the chief medical officers of all four nations. Were all their jobs under threat?

The situation in the other UK constituent countries, particularly Scotland, is considerably less dire than England - the stats make this clear. They might be ready to move - to me, England demonstrably is not.

What we are doing, behind all the lies, is clearly "the hammer and the dance" waiting for a vaccine. The graphs precisely bear this out.

 

[Bantamzen]

Governments love these sorts of things ("alert level now 3") because it gives some impression of progress I guess, personally I loathe them because I find them meaningless. Perhaps it's just me, I'm one of these people who used to be sent on courses which came up with silly acronyms like "CRISTAL" and I just couldn't see the point because I can't for the life of me see how they make things easier to understand or remember. I also used to work on a government site (full of scientists, nothing special) and there was always a stupid sign saying something about the "threat level" and I just asked myself "yes, but what does it actually mean?" and couldn't answer my own question.

But it's probably just me, perhaps there is some value to some people in these things?

Its probably just an extension of the RAG (Red / Amber / Green) system that governments often love to use, but more complex with more slides in each presentation....

Yes, but I still don't believe they bear themselves out in the actual data. So how about a bit of honesty? "We're relaxing restrictions because if we don't the economy is going to tank and we will have a lost generation of children, but we do accept there is some risk that this could cause more growth of cases, so please continue to take the utmost care in your daily life".

Problem is, lying demonstrably wins votes.

^^^ See my previous comment that I have edited ^^^

 

[talldave]

So let's move to 1m (literally) today, not in 2 weeks time.

 

[Bletchleyite]

So let's move to 1m (literally) today, not in 2 weeks time.

Bojo only does once a week, and I can't imagine him not wanting to lead that one!

I actually thought Matt Hancock's yesterday was one of the best ones so far - there was a lot explained and in a lot of detail, even if I don't wholly agree with it (I retain my view that the track and trace system is a sham by design and concentrating on the wrong thing - you'll tell your mates yourself, no need to have the Government doing it for you - it needs to concentrate on people you've been close to but don't know who they are).

 

[nlogax]

Alert level 3.. someone's changed the colour of the lightbulb?

Which shows a very clear stagnation over the last week, and that it wouldn't take much for a slight uptick.

That plateau we're seeing is the 'background noise' I think we'll just have to learn to live with.

 

[jfollows]

I went to look up what this change means.

The first two articles I read (Guardian and Independent) just talked about the alert level change as if it were an end in itself, and didn't really tell me much more.

The BBC article I read told me "Gradual relaxation of restrictions", OK, but didn't we already start doing this when the alert level was still set at 4? For which "social distancing continues", but I don't see that stopping now that we're at level 3!

So, yes, the colour has changed is about all.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That plateau we're seeing is the 'background noise' I think we'll just have to learn to live with.

Which is a valid choice, but it does not mean that we are ready to change alert level based on the descriptions on those alert levels - we demonstrably are not.

It is an outright, glaring lie. Not like it's the first one, of course, there was a bigger one in 2016.

 

[jfollows]

Which is a valid choice, but it does not mean that we are ready to change alert level based on the descriptions on those alert levels - we demonstrably are not.

It is an outright, glaring lie. Not like it's the first one, of course, there was a bigger one in 2016.

I agree, it's as if - perish the thought - someone in government this morning said "there's no good news for Boris to announce today when he's out and about, let's change the alert level from 4 to 3, that'll make him and the government look better in the polls for a while". Perish the thought!

 

[68000]

Smoke and mirrors to hide the tracing app debacle

 

[Freightmaster]

Governments love these sorts of things ("alert level now 3") because it gives some impression of progress I guess...

 

[kieron]

The decision to move from level 4 to level 3 was made by the chief medical officers of all four nations. Were all their jobs under threat?

Looking at the government's Covid-19 strategy, there's a committee (the Joint Biosecurity Centre) who advise the CMOs, who then advise the ministers. I don't know if the CMOs are supposed to have any say in what the alert level actually is.

 

[northernchris]

The situation in the other UK constituent countries, particularly Scotland, is considerably less dire than England - the stats make this clear. They might be ready to move - to me, England demonstrably is not.

What we are doing, behind all the lies, is clearly "the hammer and the dance" waiting for a vaccine. The graphs precisely bear this out.

I wouldn't read too much in to the daily infections. Baroness Harding was saying they expected a slight increase in positive results due to track and trace identifying those who are infected, and in the last week there have been 3 outbreaks at meat factories across England and Wales which will also account for some of this weeks total.

 

[The_Train]

It all means very little now, it's just another way of the Government hiding another balls up, in this case the infamous app debacle. They did it with the sudden easing of lockdown rules after the Cummings fiasco and no doubt they will store up the 2m to 1m social distancing rule for the next occasion they need to find something to hide behind