Coronavirus update - Part IV

[Update: see next a wrap-up of COVID-19 cases & deaths data across NHSx & ONS]

The last update added ONS' COVID-related death data, which augment the cases and deaths posted by NHSx at the Local Authority level akin to Counties. The post ended with: Data will be added as found and/or made available: the goal is Parish-level data to mash up with our climate change maps. We already added in the second last update a map from Cambridgeshire Live, and we now see in Cambridgeshire Independent ONS "death data by ward and by villages".

This data was found in yet another ONS page to those mentioned the previous post. This variety of places reflects the complexity of capturing and reporting of pandemic data, which ONS documents scrupulously throughout. An issue in the news was dates of recording by various agencies vs. actual date of death. ONS explains in details the issue here, stating in a nutshell that registration delay have increased slightly, as did switching from 5 day to 7 day weeks. The latter is reflected in the two sources of information in the previous blog, which record weeks ending Friday vs. Sunday. 

There is also an offset in reporting deaths between NHSx and ONS: in the graph below, ONS deaths by County in orange are two weeks behind NHSx deaths by County in blue; ONS counts are higher than NHSx as they report out-of-hospital deaths too. In addition, ONS deaths by Ward are yet another two weeks behind counts by County, possibly reflecting the extra processing as they're reported in conjunction with deprivation data and not alone.

28 July update

ONS counts by Ward are, in addition, for the period 1 Mar. - 17 Apr. as of 1 May, next update on 12 June. That start date is when death counts exceeded 1 or 2, and we'll post updates in the future. They are thus reported not in our dashboard's left hand side statistics, but as another layer to view in the central map sheet at the higher granularity level:

bit.ly/CamCOVIDinfo (auto-adjusts to your device)

A word on administrative boundaries

Wards and Counties were used here to match words used in the paper as well as common usage. Both agencies report, however, by Upper Tier Local Authority (UTLA) and Middle Layer Super Output Area (MSOA). They are roughly equivalent but not exactly Counties and Wards respectively. To see how complex administrative boundaries are, go no further than the opening page of ONS Open Geography portal. Locally try Cambridgeshire Insight portal's Geographies page.

Here is what the Cambridge and Peterborough Combined Authority includes: feel free to explore its contents and appreciate the complexity of administrative boundaries; for example pick the Cottenham bookmark, turn on Cottenham Parish and click on it pop up Ward and Parish name and outline.