As Matt Hancock would say "thank you that's a very important question", Yes that spreadsheet is a good resource, but I don't know why there are gaps? Some places have very few gaps (if any) and as you have just pointed out Barrow has one quite large gap. I assume on the gap days no tests results were published that day which means in effect any positives in the pipeline are carried over?
Thanks very much. I suppose my concern was initially that the authorities might choose to omit certain dates if test results were "undesirable", given the mismatch between low numbers in these spreadsheets and local outbreaks. However, I have realised that this mismatch has been caused instead by the exclusive focus in the gov.uk data, until 2 July, on Pillar 1 testing.
(For example, the government's decision not to share Pillar 2 test results at local authority level appears to have resulted in
External Link/Members Only.)
Now when I look at
External Link/Members Only it does indeed seem that at the moment almost everywhere the virus is losing ground, including in Cumbria and most of the rest of the North West. What I don't know, though, is whether this map already includes the Pillar 2 data you also refer to...
The data all gets very confusing in terms of dates ... such as date carried out v date posted out etc and then anything between 24 hours to 5 days for results. I wouldn't place any accuracy on specific dates but just look at how high numbers are and in particular trends.
We seem to be in a situation now where many areas possibly 70% have extremely low numbers and still declining whilst the remainder are rising and in some cases quite significantly (such as Leicester) and this is distorting the total figure which has plateaued.
For example up here on the Fylde coast Blackpool has been quite badly affected per head of population during the epidemic (as with Barrow) but both towns are now in much better position. Blackpool Hospital Trust has recently announced they now only have three Covid inpatients and no new admissions during the last week. This compares with about 150 patients at the peak resulting in around 230 deaths.
To confuse matters further the positive tests have in the last 24 hours been updated to include all pillar 2 tests in the totals for all areas which has boosted the numbers considerably.
Thank you, very useful to know how you look at and make use of the data. It might have been helpful if the gov.uk spreadsheets had included a cautionary note around the inclusion of Pillar 2 data as of 2 July, but I suspect that might be considered to draw too much attention to the previous "oversight"
