Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Haringey named as London Borough with Slowest Rate of Covid Spread

As much as I have a love-hate relationship with spurious statistics, it was good to read that Haringey tops the list for a good reason - at least!

According to a report on the soaraway My London webiste, NHS stats show that Haringey has the slowest rate of covid spread in London.

The data is taken from NHS England's figures and show the number of new cases between May 13 to May 26.

Richmond upon Thames - 10 new cases

Haringey - 13

Newham - 13

Hillingdon - 13

Kingston upon Thames - 15

Southwark - 15

Islington - 16

Hackney - 17

Enfield - 18

I'm very cautious about anything on My London because their normal practice is to grab a bit of data and find a way of mangling it into a web-grabbing headline. But, whilst I haven't checked the data, this looks kosher.

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Permalink Reply by Gina O on July 20, 2020 at 15:07

I would not bother with any figures from My London, sorry.

As for comparing London boroughs and the rate of spread then figures for the number of cases in May is going to tell you precisely nothing.

The government coronavirus data page has very detailed info now and if you want to make comparisons have a look there. https://coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/ The info on deaths is very complicated and it's better to rely on the ONS data on that, even though it's out of date. This is what the Mayor's office use and they have a summary for London. https://www.london.gov.uk/coronavirus/coronavirus-numbers-london

The low numbers for Haringey may well be because we had it badly at the start of the outbreak in March - which is when all the people I know locally who very likely had it - and back then there was very little testing. There's a degree of herd immunity in London as around 20% of people had the infection, based on antibody testing, and quite possibly a lot more. If Haringey had it badly at the start (when we weren't testing) then we might have it "better" now because of that.

Also, when the numbers are very low the rate of change is fairly meaningless. Going from 2 to 4 cases is a 100% increase. Going from 10 to 11 cases is a 10% increase. It tells you nothing about the rate of infection in the population or the change in the rate.