The imposition of a partial lockdown in parts of the North of England we’re rash’ decision which is not backed up by the data, an Oxford professor has claimed.
According to a report in the Telegraph Professor Carl Henegehan, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford said the figures were skewed by delayed test results and when plotted by the date the test was taken showed no overall alarming rise.
The northern lockdown was a rash decision,” he said. “Where’s the rise? By date of test through July there’s no change if you factor in all the increased testing that’s going on.
“As areas are tested, like Oldham, then there’s a slight rise in detected cases, asymptomatics.
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“It’s not clear if these are false positives, or if these folk have viable virus or just RNA fragments detected by a test threshold that picks up minute traces of RNA.
“While you get these small clusters, which will have been occurring for some time, they have not led to an overall increase in cases
“The government needs to allow the local public health teams to do their job when localised clusters emerge.”
Between July 22 and July 29 the seven day rolling average of reported cases jumped between those two dates from 659 to 753 – 16.7 per cent says the report
However when judged by specimen date the seven day rolling average actually dropped from 641 to 442, a 31 per cent decrease.
Any rise is also being skewed by a general increase in testing. The seven-day rolling average for tests carried out between July 22 and July 29 jumped from 137,427 to 153,252 – an 11.5 per cent increase, wiping out much of the increase.
“Why is no one checking this out at government level?,” added Prof Heneghan
“The specimen date is more reliable as the reporting data will be skewed by the delay in pillar 2 testing reporting.”
