Less good news from the Zoe App which has had its biggest rises in months today.
Symptomatic cases are up for the third day and are accelerating - from 15, 275 yesterday to 16, 011
And predicted cases have risen again for about the sixth day running by the largest recent amount from 1148 to 1333.
This is a little disconcerting though probably inevitable as we ease up.
The hospital data really has to be watched carefully now as that has not been doing so well either for the past few days with some rises in England regions especially after months of falls.
What happens there over the weekend and into the first half of next week will tell us if these rising cases are leading to an uptick in cases requiring hospitalisation. Admission data has hinted they might be. But also that they tend not to stay long so are not going up by very much right now - possibly as the vaccines are reducing severe disease.
I agree with the post above that we should target areas where fast spreading variants are around with a mobile vaccination task force to try to increase uptake on those groups from which this uptick is coming.
Especially now we have the first evidence published seeming to show the vaccines cut out not just symptomatic and more severe illness from Covid in those who have them but also stem transmission to others around them.
Another concern to report is that Stockport has now officially become an area of high infection on the Zoe App. Alongside Chorley. These are the only two in the NW.
However, places like Burnley and Hyndburn do not appear because Zoe by its nature primarily attracts affluent younger people using apps and not to the same degree older working class ethnic families in large estates. Obviously these are big generalisations but it is why they do not have enough people using the app in places like East Lancashire to make meaningful predictions they advise to explain why this was missed.
Stockport has been heading towards concern in real terms with reported cases escalating - though not yet showing up on the official case data each evening as being the problem Zoe is flagging here.
Bolton has now fallen out of the numbers that signify a problem and Stockport has rapidly overtaken it as I have noted all week there seemed a threat it was doing based on Zoe data. Though not yet actual cases. Yesterday for instance the daily Pop Score rise was 5 for Stockport and 23 for Bolton. Not remotely reflecting the Zoe app - though a little high for Stockport on current numbers and lower than the last couple of days for Bolton. So the right trend at least.
Here are the GM boroughs based on Zoe reported data:-
Number of Active cases / Active cases per million population estimated from the first data (all versus yesterday)
BOLTON 30 / 106 - huge drop from 299 / 1054
STOCKPORT 409 / 1414 - well up from 282 / 978
Will have to watch the Stockport real case data with trepidation now and hope - if it translates from Zoe to real world - that the people in charge do not take a week to see it happen. As by then GM as a whole may well be in trouble as there are a few hints might be happening.
BURY 18 / 96 - was 12 / 66 (rising a bit too)
MANCHESTER 169 / 310 - was 224 / 411 (by contrast doing better)
OLDHAM 146 / 624 - was 11 / 45 (an even more concerning rapid rise)
ROCHDALE 17 / 80 - was 93 - 60 (seems to be better than current actual cases suggest)
SALFORD 136 / 538 - was 24 / 97 (another big rise)
TAMESIDE 168 / 752 - was 118 / 529 (also up a fair bit)
TRAFFORD 55 / 235 /- was 36 / 153 (up a little)
WIGAN 95 / 294 / - was 62 / 191 (up a little)
One caveat to apply. With only 16,000 or so reports around the UK number working from at Zoe are now low and the odd extra case seems to cause big jumps in their estimations.
So I would only regard these numbers as an up/down trend not actually meaningful in raw number terms.
We can say quite a lot of GM is going up - with Stockport as a large borough showing up first as a notable problem - but others could turn like this quite quickly.
Yet Bolton is going the other way and has suddenly fallen dramatically.
So - whilst these are guidelines to events - they are really showing predictions not actuality as the day to day test numbers do.
Zoe is not Nostradamus but is to a degree making educated guesses.
Sunday data is always low but this is the lowest reported for many months.
The only regions with cases were 1 in East (King's Lynn) and 1 in Midlands (Birmingham)
The deaths were 1 aged 40 - 59 and 1 aged 60 - 79.
Wk to wk:- 11 (3 NW) v 9 (1 NW) v 6 (0 NW) v 3 (1 NW) v 2 (0 NW) TODAY
The two were on 7 May and 6 May. The 13 on 5 May did not increase at day 4 and is the only day in May so far that has had total deaths allotted to that day above single figures even after add ons.
Unfortunately the news from Greater Manchester is not good. Particularly for Bolton which is worse than ever today.
Up to 91 cases - half the entire GM score of 186. And an even bigger week on week rise of 50 .
This is in fact MORE than the entire NW week on week rise of 47.
Single handed Bolton has turned the NW into the worst area in the UK and put Greater Manchester at risk of delaying opening up as this variant there is clearly a big problem.
The tardiness in spotting this needs to be investigated given how we saw it unfold in here well before it was reported.
Manchester on 26 in second has never been this far behind anyone else up top given its much larger population it should always have the most cases.
Bolton's Pop score today went up by 32 in one day!
As for the rest Rochdale on 15 and Stockport on 12 and surprisingly Bury on 11 were moderately high for a Sunday and up week to week respectively by 9, 6 and 3 - but nothing like the 50 of Bolton.
They are not doing well but as yet Stockport is not doing a Bolton just not as good as it was the last few weeks. It's Pop score rose today by 4 and Rochdale and Bury - both up by 6 - had worse days today than Stockport.
But none of them even close to that 32 from Bolton, which puts these numbers into perspective.
As you will surmise the North West (or rather GM practically single handed with a new recent high of 64% of all the cases in the NW - half of them in Bolton) - is why cases are rising.
I await the hospital data for the North West tomorrow and in coming few days with some trepidation as that will tell us if this is just a minor blip caused by localised cases that Zoe is suggesting are already fading (hope so) or whether we may be at the bottom looking up.
If Zoe is right those Stockport numbers will climb in coming days too. Elise will sadly have a few more concerns than probably losing the council leadership to the Lib Dems if so.
The next week will tell us a lot about where the region and GM in particular is going.
Fingers crossed it is a flash in the pan and this time next week City will have finally clinched that title and these numbers will be looking better too.
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