If you look at the current cases maps the colour for inner London is 100-199 and most of the rest is 200-399 and has been for weeks 2 notches down on the rest of the country.
Of course, an alternative explanation is that the cases are there but they aren't being reported.
I am not familiar with the geography as London is one of the few parts of the UK I have not lived in! But I would think it has fewer occupational residents than those who work there, So I would not have been surprised by the suburbs being more likely to have cases than the inner city. Though I assume you know the area far better than I do. Its 20 years since I was in London. That was just to appear on Lorraine and This Morning and do some other PR related stuff and so a quick visit. Things are likely to have changed a lot since then.
London had a much worse wave last December/January than the North West did and its cases then were double what the NW was getting and topped 10,000 a day at the peak as I recall.
So these thing do go in cycles and that infectivity level may well hve left the area a little less likely to be so heavily impacted right now. But about two months ago the NW and London total cases were pretty similar. And I would imagine if you looked deep into the NW numbers the actual reason they fluctuate will be different areas taking their turn at increasing cases.
In GM the past 6 months have seen huge jumps up in Bolton, and more recently in Trafford, then Stockport and if you took a snapshot whilst those were going on the numbers would look very different from when they subside. Stockport has fallen from stratospheric to routine numbers in under 2 weeks. So what looks true now is very dfferent from this time last month just due to how these waves ripple through the UK.
Daily cases are also not a great guide as they fluctuate depending on the speed of returns from labs so recrd cases across multple days. Why I stress trends and week to week and Pop Scores as these smooth out that unevenness.
But every demographic will impact the local total I would imagine. And is likely one reason for variations within boroughs or regions. Rate of uptake of the vaccination will be one for sure. But being the most vaccinated in GM across the whoke pandemic did not stop Stockport spiking. Though having had the fewest cases due to economic factors will be relevant. Stockport is relatively more afluent than some other GM boroughs where deprivation or culture will be part of why they they do less well including in vaccination rates.
If Roubaix pops in here hopefully he can offer a more informed view on these matters. But I do not see anything that surprises me in the London data. BUt it is more than possible I am missing something through lack of local awareness of the region.
Sorry I cannot be more helpful.
