Morten Moreland in yesterday’s Times
The last three weeks have seen much speculation about the numbers of COVID patients in intensive care units, particularly in the North West and London. Further local lockdowns have been enforced by the Government in the North West, London and yesterday in the Midlands on the grounds that the NHS risks being overwhelmed. But how close is the system to being swamped, and what can we reasonably conclude from publicly available information?
NHS data released to the public to date is incomplete and usually a week in arrears. Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson point out in their
recent Spectator article that this crisis has been characterised by sequential data inadequacy from the Government's scientific advisors, Public Health England and the NHS. As they say "a look back at the figures issued shows that
the track record, eventually validated against the facts, is abysmal. This is important because
major decisions continue to be taken on the strength of such data".
Some of these mistakes relate to crass errors of basic management, others more disturbing
over-exaggeration or over-extrapolation of the size of the threats to public health. It is known that more granular data exist - for instance around the cause of death statistics and in-hospital Covid infection rates.
But these figures are not being released to the public by the NHS despite requests for more transparency - seemingly at odds with Freedom of Information obligations.
The data we do have throw up some interesting patterns.
Comment: RT reports on the frustration of the Welsh population: