I watched the national news at 1pm and Nottingham has the highest rate of infection. I watched the following local news and it's those dirty bastards (EFC fans excepted!) in LIverpool who are showing the highest rate. Does anyone know WhatTF is going on! Come the 6pm news we will find that it's Newcastle, no, Leeds, oh, hang on a mo, it's Liverpool!
Nottingham has had 5658 cases - less than Bolton and not much more than Wigan. Its pop score is 1699.6 Below most of the boroughs in GM.
Liverpool has 11,224 cases - less than Manchester's 12, 625 and a pop score of 2253.6 - less than Manchester;s 2283.6
So on those measures across the pandemic Manchester is worst.
But if you base it on NOW and how cases are going across the past week versus the local population Nottingham has had the biggest sudden increase and Liverpool is doing a bit worse than Manchester and Merseyside as a whole worse than Greater Manchester.
So there is no simple answer to the question. It depends what measure you use.
THe pop score based watch list (how much that has risen over 7 days) is the most reliable way to see who is currently having a problem v anyone else. And on that Nottingham has come from nowhere to be top so is very much a red watch place.
The government use this to create a watch list to consider if and when to put places under restriction but up to now wait a week or two to see if thihgs change. They mght modify that to act more swiftly now. As there are places further south starting to tick up too. The rise is moving south this time. Unlike last when it came north.
Manchester is currently the only place in GM in the top ten of that watch list and has fallen down the table steadily. LIverpool and Knowsley on Merseyside ate both ahead of it.
This is why Merseyside will be tier 3 and GM tier 2. Nottingham should be tier 3 on current numbers but might get a bit of time in tier 2 first to try to improve. Though it has a vey rapid increase so they might decide that they have to try to shut it off faster.