WILTSHIRE and the South West has so far been spared the full Covid juggernaut that has hit other areas.
I’ve been mulling over some of the facts and figures for our area.
According to Government data, England has had 49,612 deaths as of September 18. Narrowing this down, the South West has had 2,919, Wiltshire 367, and Trowbridge has suffered twenty (according to separate data recorded from March-July).
There is a caveat in that the data records people dying who have recently tested positive which means that not all will have died from Covid.
In terms of cumulative recorded cases (i.e., total positive test results) England has had 454,397, the South West 20,711, and Wiltshire 1,978, again care is needed since the wisdom of recording a ‘case’ largely on the basis of a test result is moot.
Myriad graphs and spreadsheets are available online concerning these statistics and for further reading check out LG Inform and Gov.uk.
In terms of cases per 100,000 – a fairer enabler of comparing apples to apples – Wiltshire has a rolling average since March of 365 per 100,000, whilst at the opposite end of the scale, Newcastle has over 1,000 per 100,000.
To ascertain the likelihood of returning to a semblance of lockdown, we need to zero in further by looking at cases per 100,000 over a seven-day period.
This is the data which informs decision-makers, as it gives clues about future transmission and ICU uptake.
At the end of last week, Wiltshire again was fairly low - the weekly infection rate here is 44 per 100,000; better than the nation’s average of 79 and much better than Newcastle’s 510 (which went into a form of lockdown at 250/100,000).
Compared to our neighbours, we are neck-and-neck with Swindon (38/100,000) and behind Bath and North East Somerset (72/100,000 – perhaps partly due to the arrival of students for the academic year).
Some commentators have questioned whether we are experiencing the ‘second wave’ of the virus. They point out that regions such as the north east did not have a severe first wave and say that this is instead an extension or delay of the first wave – the so-called ‘dry tinder’ effect.
Applying this logic to us in Wiltshire – and the south west in general – means we could be next, as we too did not experience a bad bout during March-May (unlike London and the south east).
I doubt this will be the case since demographically our area has important differences from those areas chiefly affected in the first wave, and, in this wave, if it is indeed a wave as opposed to a variation of the seasonal hump we expect from various infectious respiratory diseases.
We should be probing the utility and reliability of the data and constructing a wide margin of uncertainty around it. It follows that we should be very cautious about imposing restrictions that will curtail liberty, trash the economy and clock up deaths and distress from non-Covid illnesses left untreated.
I have had complaints about the difficulty of getting Covid tests locally. It follows from the statistics given concerning areas with high prevalence (such as Newcastle) that test resources have been focussed elsewhere.
I think most people would regard that as sensible given that we have been relatively lightly affected to date. Plainly that calculus changes in the event that our numbers start to climb. I very much hope they don’t.