Unique people tested
Inner secrets of the the UK GOV coronavirus dashboard
In my last post I introduced a a little known variable available within the download section of the UK GOV coronavirus dashboard called…
uniquePeopleTestedBySpecimenDateRollingSum
…the definition of which may be found here. This is a rolling 7-day sum that is available for the nation of England that can be unpacked to provide daily counts. In doing so we discover a hidden secret, so let’s get the kettle on and get stuck in!
This is what the variable looks like when plotted out…
…the message here is that we were testing more and more folk across England over time, with the peak effort falling shy of 4,000,000 unique individuals back in Dec ‘21 - Jan ‘22. It should go without saying that if we test more people we are more likely to detect positive cases; though I’m going to go with saying because this simple logic has fallen on deaf authoritarian ears these last two years. If we want to compare disease prevalence1 in 2022 with disease prevalence in 2020 we need to account for this curve. B…