New Cases Declining Across All Regions and Nations

Main points

• We report R estimates and forecasts of new cases and hospital admissions for the nations and regions. With this tracker we move to a monthly reporting frequency. The next tracker will be released on 4th November.
• Despite the increased social contact from the reopening of schools and latterly universities, the R number remains below 1 in all UK nations and English regions (Figure 1).
• For the adult population in England we observe a noteworthy compositional change relative to the forecasts made a fortnight ago. The sub-ten age group is expected to decline in new cases over the coming two weeks. The 40-64 age group is likely to see an increase in new cases. Forecasts for all other age groups are higher compared to the previous forecast. The main cause for this would appear to be a spill-over from the school aged population (Figure 2).
• When the compositional change is netted out, new Covid-19 cases are forecast to decline in all English regions (Figure 3). Decreases can be expected in all UK nations (Figure 4).
• Hospital admissions are also forecast to decrease. This is in line with our forecasts a fortnight ago, and of a similar order of magnitude to our forecasts made 4 weeks ago based on data up until the end of August (Figure 5).
• The proportion of those over 16 who have received their first vaccination dose is now 90 per cent; 83 per cent have received their second dose as well. This summary figure conceals important heterogeneity across age brackets (Figure 6). Encouragingly, more than 50 per cent of those under 30 are now fully vaccinated.

“Hospital admissions continue to decrease in line with our forecast of a fortnight ago. Going back four weeks, at a time when scenarios envisaged by SAGE placed admissions in the range 2,000 to 7,000 at the start of October, we forecast them to be around 1,000 per day. In terms of new cases, the recent increase among the children in England due to schools reopening appear to have spilled over into the adult population. But the compositional changes across age groups net out to a decline in new cases. This holds across all parts of UK. Looking ahead, the factor that next comes into play will be the increased social contact indoors as the weather turns.”