CITY’S MISSING COVID FIGURES
ADJUSTED DATA SHOWS RATE OF INFECTION DURING THE SECOND PEAK WAS MUCH HIGHER THAN FIRST THOUGHT
NOTTINGHAM’S missing coronavirus data has revealed the true scale of cases in the city at the peak of the second wave.
A huge increase of 1,968 cases added to Nottingham’s overall total number of positive Covid-19 tests recorded since the start of the pandemic earlier this week was put down to a change in how Public Health England record positive tests at a local level.
The changes mean a person’s current address is now used in official Government data, instead of details registered on a patient’s NHS Summary Care Record.
Data released by Public Health England now shows the number of cases during the peak of the city’s second wave was actually far greater than initially estimated.
According to the data, most of these additional cases were recorded in the period between September 28 and October 12.
Previously – before the records were updated – during the week commencing September 28, a total of 2,032 cases were initially recorded in the city.
However, with the new address rule applied, the true number of cases recorded during that period has now been revealed as 2,697 - 665 more than initially reported, which means that at the time Nottingham’s infection rate was actually 810.2 cases per 100,000 people, rather than the 610.4 reported at the time.
The following week, commencing October 5, had the true number of cases been recorded at the time the official figure would have stood at 4,049 cases rather than the
3,091 reported - an increase of 958.
During that week, which saw the most cases in the city since the pandemic began, the infection rate would have actually been 1,216.3 cases per 100,000 instead of 928.5 initially recorded at the time.
This means, on average, more than one in every 100 people in the city had tested positive for coronavirus.
On October 12, the news that Nottingham would enter into tier 2 lockdown was confirmed.
Lee Anderson, MP for Ashfield, said the high number of positive cases seen during this time is likely due to university students in the city.
He said: “It’s a difficult one because Nottingham is a university city so you are going to see an influx of cases when students arrive - this is going to affect the figures.
“Most of those positive tests are from people who normally live outside of Nottingham and I don’t see any way around that - but they have to be down as Nottingham infections from the beginning.”
Public Health England says the recent changes were made to try and be “a better indicator of geographic location for mobile populations such as students”.
The biggest daily difference in cases came on October 7, when 720 cases were recorded under the new rules compared to the initial figure of 520.
The changes, which took effect from September 1, will now be applied to all future tests carried out across the country.
Nottingham City Council leader, Councillor David Mellen, said: “It’s not possible to accurately assess what impact these extra cases might have had on the spread of Covid-19 in Nottingham. “We know that around this time there was a very sudden and sharp rise in cases here, taking us to the highest rate in England, and there were delays in the Government taking Nottingham into Tier Two and then Tier Three restrictions.
“But we took strong pre-emptive action in advance of Government imposing tiered restrictions on us, urging our citizens to stick to new restrictions straight away. We can see that cases fell as quickly as they rose – now thankfully dropping below the national average and still falling – and we can only hope and assume our swift action and great response by local people led to this dramatic change in events.”
Click on this story at nottinghamshire.live to see the full adjusted figures from September 1 to November 14.