• Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    11 months ago

    it's just that it is still such a small number of cases that it doesn't matter.

    To the best of my knowledge there is no meaningful surveillance in the USA or EU. Some places are still doing wastewater testing but it's difficult to make solid determinations from wastewater.

    • Blake [he/him]@feddit.uk
      ·
      11 months ago

      This is an article about the UK. I don't have a strong understanding of what the situation is like anywhere else, but in the UK, the numbers are quite low.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        Is there still surveillance in the UK? Afaik Wales is still doing wastewater testing, but I'm not aware of any other systematic surveillance being conducted now.

        • Blake [he/him]@feddit.uk
          ·
          11 months ago

          in England, yeah, there is - it's not as good as it once was and it's getting dialled back more and more, but we still have some reporting & surveillance - you can see the dashboard here.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            ·
            11 months ago

            If I'm reading that right they did 30k tests and got 6k positives, about 17%. I would consider that enough infection going around to be very concerned. Am I misunderstanding those numbers?

            • Blake [he/him]@feddit.uk
              ·
              11 months ago

              Well, most people wouldn't get tested unless they have a reason to, e.g. displaying symptoms, so that skews the numbers significantly - there's no broad testing happening anymore, really. Number of infections per 100k population is a more interesting metric - I was curious and put together a line graph of that over the last 12 months.

              *removed externally hosted image*

              I think the little uptick that we're seeing recently, is just seemingly part of the pattern of steadily reducing number of cases - there's a little bump, followed by a drop. I'm not sure what causes the pattern, though.

              Anyways, the more in-depth reports have lots of information, one I think is particularly interesting is for google trends in COVID symptoms - that hasn't really increased recently. In general, cases, hospitalisations, deaths, and positivity (i.e. the number of tests coming back as positive) are significantly lower now than they were.