THREAD on new cases: We've been watching cases flatline and then increase for the last month. But was it just increased testing? Was the increase real? The answer, unfortunately, seems to be yes. The 7-day daily average of new cases has now risen for 14 of the last 15 days. 1/7

The most recent test and trace data shows that while the proportion of people testing positive in hospital settings has gone *down* - it has gone *up* for community tests (up to 23rd July). This means it's *not* just that we're finding more cases. 2/7 https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/nhs-test-and-trace-statistics-england-weekly-reports

Added to this, the Office of National Statistics weekly infection survey report (where they regularly test about 15,000 people for COVID) is now also reporting an increase in cases. They now estimate 4.2K new cases a day up from ~2K a couple of weeks ago. 3/7

The increases are mainly in England and Wales and cases are concentrated in certain areas of England - explore for yourself on Prof Friston's page here: https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/dashboard/local/ 4/7

Meanwhile Spain, Germany & France all seeing bigger increases after longer stable period than us. This is bad because they opened up bars etc a few weeks before us & no reason to think we won't follow. The good news is that our increase is still small & so easier to reverse. 5/7

In that context, it's good that govt is pausing (some) reopening & trying to reduce spread in hotspots (although the way they did it was v confusing & damaging to trust). But I worry it's too little - still want us to go back to work & leaving indoor bars etc open. 6/7

A #ZeroCOVID approach (adopted in NI, Scotland, advocated by @IndependentSage ) where govt drives down cases as much as possible *now* is how to avoid this damaging yo-yo-ing. AND the best way of ensuring children can go back to schools safely in September. 7/7