Don’t Blame Tories For This One! by Les May

EARLIER this year the Northern Voices carried an article which drew attention to the fact that the average daily number of new Covid 19 infections was beginning to rise, ('The Fat Lady Still Isn’t Singing' 16 August). Later in the month a second article drew attention to the fact that the increase in the daily number of new infections was continuing and that it could not be accounted for by the increase in testing, (Don’t You Know There’s A War On? 27 August).

Prior to the second article the daily number of new infections had been increasing slowly; it took some 50 days for the average number of new infections each day to double from 550 to 1100. After 27 August the number of new cases each day doubled from 1100 to 2200 in only thirteen days, and it doubled yet again in the next 15 days. In other words the pandemic in the UK had entered the ‘exponential phase’ with the daily number new infections doubling about every fortnight.

In the last week or so the picture has changed considerably. The time taken for the number of new infections to double has fallen to about nine days. This 5 day decrease in the time taken for the daily number of new infections to double might not seem very significant, but it is!

The average number of new infections over the past seven days is 10,500. In one month, 28 days, the daily number of new infections would double twice, first to 21,000 after a fortnight then to 42,000 after a month if the doubling time were still 14 days. With a doubling time of 9 days the number of new infections would double three times; first to 21,000 after nine days, to 42,000 after 18 days and to 84,000 after 27 days. This is NOT a prediction that there will be 80,000 cases a day in one month’s time: it is what COULD happen unless something is done to slow down or preferably halt the spread of the virus.

The ‘Track and Trace’ system may be shambolic as is the failure in the last few days to accurately report the number of new cases, but these are not in themselves the reason we are seeing 10,000+ new cases a day. I am a lifelong Labour voter, but I am not going to blame Johnson for the fact that the time taken for the number of new cases each day to double has shortened in the past week or so. The only way to halt the spread of the virus is to meet as few people as possible, wear a mask in any indoor space, physically distance yourself from other people wherever you are and decontaminate your hands, and anything that other people may have touched, by washing. Neither Johnson nor any other Tory in the land can do this for us. It is up to us.

Appendix

The figures for doubling time for new cases and daily deaths were obtained from the daily figures published by the Government. The method used was first to calculate each day the average number of new cases during the past seven days. This is commonly known as the ‘rolling average’. This eliminates the weekend effect where reported numbers are lower on Saturday and Sunday, then higher the following Monday.

The doubling time can be found by counting the number of days for the number of new infections to double directly from the rolling average. I prefer to calculate the logarithm to the base two of the rolling average. That way every time the number before the decimal point (the characteristic) increases by ‘1’, we know the number of infections each day has doubled.