Here are the changes to the ten GM borough Weekly Pop Scores over past 7 days:
Pop Score is cases per 100,000 over past week. Lowest the better.
Borough v POP today v Pop 7 days ago v Increase/Decrease
BOLTON 188 - 144 - Up 44
TAMESIDE 218 - 156 - Up 62
OLDHAM 228 - 185 - Up 43
WIGAN 229 - 156 - Up 73
SALFORD 233 - 217 - Up 16
MANCHESTER 234 - 207 - Up 27
ROCHDALE 247 - 220 - Up 27
STOCKPORT 266 - 176 - Up 90
TRAFFORD 289 - 212 - Up 77
BURY 301 - 232 - Up 69
As you can see there no question who has had the worst week - Stockport. With Trafford not far behind. These two have gone from top 3 to bottom 3 in very quick order.
We might guess THIS is where the new variant might be. Watching these Pop score rises might be a good guide to that now the new variant is shown to be 25% of all GM cases from data just before Christmas - so almost certainly upwards of that now.
Interesting that Bolton, Tameside and Oldham - all of whom have had major outbreaks in recent months are now coping so much better.
But Wigan was too before Christmas but is now going up again.
Hard to see anything but rises if Tier 4 is being taken as seriously as we are hearing, As in often not.
Unless and until we get a proper lockdown I fear we will see numbers rise for a while yet.
Of course, this inevitably means that the current low hospital and death data in the NW is going to change upward too.
Especially when you remember that GM is actually doing far better than other parts of the NW - including Merseyside and East Lancashire and one of them is still in Tier 3.
