Startling stuff in this FT piece regarding the lack of data distilled down to a local level (text copied from elsewhere as it's behind a paywall)
https://www.ft.com/content/301c847c-a31 ... 66933d423a
This is a thoroughly ridiculous way to manage a public health crisis and it boggles my mind at the lack of shared data and shared decision making going on here.The ability of local leaders to manage new coronavirus outbreaks in the UK is being hampered by gaps in the reporting of infection data for cities and regions, according to analysis by the Financial Times.
The government publishes a UK-wide figure for Covid-19 cases every day that includes tests from hospitals and those processed by commercial laboratories, including samples taken at home. But at a subnational level the total of new daily cases contains only hospital tests. The result is that hundreds of local authorities across the country are unable to see a timely picture of what is happening in their communities or compare that with other cities and regions of the UK.
This gap in the subnational and regional data has been cited by local political leaders and health officials in Leicester as one reason for a delay in locking down the east Midlands city, where virus cases have spiked. “For weeks we have been trying to get information about the level of testing in the city and the results of that testing in the city,” Peter Soulsby, mayor of Leicester, told the BBC on Tuesday. According to published data for Leicester, the city recorded just 80 new positive tests between June 13-26. But health secretary Matt Hancock revealed that there were in fact 944 as he announced the decision to tighten the lockdown in Leicester, closing non-essential shops and ordering schools to shut to all non-key worker pupils by Thursday.
Public Health England publishes a weekly breakdown of the two categories: tests from hospitals, known as pillar 1, and from commercial labs that process at-home and drive-through tests, known as pillar 2. While PHE releases full data for England’s nine main regions with a two-week delay, the areas are too big to give local authorities a useful picture of the situation in their communities.
Leicester city council’s public health department only received the elevated infection numbers cited by Mr Hancock last Thursday. They could not compare with places elsewhere because the so-called pillar 2 figures are only made available to officials in their own local authority area if they have signed the Data Protection Act. “I would wish that they had shared that [data] with us right from the start,” said Sir Peter, Leicester’s mayor. “And I wish they had taken a more speedy decision rather than leaving it 11 days. That's a long gap and a long time for the virus to spread.”
