New app predicts regions facing tier three

NOTTINGHAM, Bury and Hartlepool are among the regions most likely to be placed under tightened tier three restrictions, according to a new Covid symptom app.

King’s College London yesterday unveiled its tier prediction model, which uses infection data to forecast which areas in England will next be moved to tier three, or very high restrictions.

Burnley, which today moves into tier three, and Manchester were ranked first and second respectively by the model, developed in partnership with Stanford University in the US and health science company ZOE

Sheffield, which currently has 435 cases per 100,000 people, and Newcastle-upon-tyne, which has 436, are earmarked by the app for future restrictions.

Out of the top 10 hotspot areas highlighted as most likely to face more stringent restrictions, all but one are in the north of England.

This has been driven by the North West continuing to have the fastest doubling time in the UK, according to the study, with coronavirus infections doubling roughly every 10 days. Manchester and Salford have been identified as being at risk of imminent tier three restrictions amid an ongoing political impasse over the amount of financial support available to the Greater Manchester region as cases remain very high. “The data is no longer showing the exponential increases that we were seeing a couple of weeks ago, but is clearly showing new cases continuing to rise,” said Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s.

The app works by collecting data from symptomatic users in order to create estimates approximately a week in advance of other sources.

Local authorities in Newcastle have warned residents that they need to “step up” in order to avoid the imposition of tier three measures after seven local authorities in the North East lobbied the Government for a reprieve.

They were given an extra week by ministers on the condition that infections continue to decline.

The model successfully predicted Burnley and Pendle would have new restrictions imposed, after Lancashire was placed under tier three measures from today.

10 days

Roughly the amount of time it takes the number of Covid cases to double in the north west of England