‘Rash’ northern lockdown based on inaccurate data, says expert
IMPOSING a widespread regional lockdown in the North West was a rash decision which is not backed up by the data, an Oxford professor has claimed.
People in Greater Manchester, East Lancashire and parts of West Yorkshire were banned from meeting different households indoors, in a move that Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said was “absolutely necessary”.
But Prof Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine at Oxford, said the figures were skewed by delayed test results and, when plotted by the date the test was taken, showed no overall alarming rise.
“The northern lockdown was a rash decision,” he said. “Where’s the rise? By date of test through July there’s no change if you factor in all the increased testing that’s going on.
“As areas are tested, like Oldham, there’s a slight rise in detected cases, asymptomatics.
“It’s not clear if these are false positives, or if these folk have viable virus or just RNA fragments detected by a test threshold that picks up minute traces of RNA. While you get these small clusters, which will have been occurring for some time, they have not led to an overall increase in cases
“The Government needs to allow the local public health teams to do their job when localised clusters emerge.”
Mapping the coronavirus trend by result date appears to show a slight increase in cases over the past few weeks, but based on specimen date – a more reliable measure – cases appear to have plateaued and may even be falling.
Between July 22 and July 29, the seven-day rolling average of reported cases jumped from 659 to 753 – 16.7 per cent.
However, when judged by specimen date, the seven-day rolling average actually dropped from 641 to 442, a 31 per cent decrease. Any rise is also being skewed by a general increase in testing.
The seven-day rolling average for tests carried out between July 22 and July 29 jumped from 137,427 to 153,252
– an 11.5 per cent increase, wiping out much of the rise.
“Why is no one checking this out at government level?” asked Prof Heneghan. “The specimen date is more reliable as the reporting data will be skewed by the delay in pillar 2 testing reporting.”
On Friday, Boris Johnson also said that the Government had been swayed by Office for National Statistics data that showed a “slight increase”.
The ONS estimated that 35,700 people in England were infected with Covid-19 between July 20 and July 26, or one in 1,500 people. The week before, statisticians had calculated around 27,700 were infected, or one in 2,000.
However, the new calculation was based on just 59 people testing positive out of 116,026 swab tests (0.05 per cent). The previous week, just 45 people tested positive out of 114,674. (0.39 per cent). It means that statisticians have extrapolated data for a whole country based on just 14 extra positive tests.
Prof Sheila Bird, formerly programme leader at MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, said that while the ONS data was “alerting”, it may not result in more serious cases or admissions to hospital.