Using ARIMA To Investigate COVID Death (part 3)

Cranking the handle on the latest daily data sitting in the UK GOV coronavirus dashboard

Today I am going to use the methodology developed for parts 1 and 2 of this series to look at daily certified death across England for the next slice, this being the period Sep 2020 - May 2021 which saw the second and third wave of cases, viral variants and vaccination roll-out (among other things). Patrick Swayze once took to Dirty Dancing but here we are ogling at dirty data - I have lost track of changes in definitions and other sleights of hand. It’s all in the hip movement below camera I guess. We shall start with one of those dual time series plots of deaths and cases for the period 3 Sep 2020 - 22 May 2021 (n=262):

This is a cracking mirrored pairing, with cases building in number a few weeks prior to the deaths that invariably followed. My eyes suggest a 3 - 4 week delay and they wouldn’t be wrong because we can reach for a cross-correlation plot that confirms this: