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Saturday, January 23, 2021

More numbers

It's difficult in broadcasting. Linear news doesn't easily deliver facts and figures so that you can look across a balance sheet. I'd like the main BBC News bulletins at 6pm and 10pm to be a bit more methodical, and up their commitment to statistics. 

The daily offering - deaths, new infections, hospital admissions, and vaccinations - needs expansion and breaking down further, at least on some days of the week.  

Why do we stick to deaths within a 28 day positive test ?  Work at Leicester suggests a longer date range would hugely increase that figure.  I can sense those Newsgathering planners going bananas when we reach 100,000 deaths by the 28 day measure - but let's have some real perspective. Not just the ONS excess deaths, but a look at those struggling with long-term lung, heart and kidney side effects of a Covid infection. And please, once a week, can we isolate and report deaths in care homes ?

Why not break the new infections down by variant, occasionally ?  Is the Kent variant just rolling around the country, gradually spreading north and west ?  

Can we break down hospital admissions ?  In the first wave we were told you more at risk through age, pre-existing conditions, weight, ethnicity, socio-economic deprivation, and job category. Is that true for the second wave ? Are bus drivers still a problem ?  How many NHS staff are in NHS beds ?

And some other targets ?  How many more doctors and nurses are there in the NHS compared with a year ago ? 

As you might imagine, I could go on......

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