• 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.