With the coronavirus being at the forefront of everyone’s minds this week, we have been asked over and over ‘where do you get your figures from?’, ‘why are your numbers different to…?‘, both very good questions.
The Swindonian is a small team of local people, to my knowledge not one of us being an expert on virology. This means the information we report is information that either we receive, direct from Public Health England, NHS UK, the government (national and local) or lastly direct from the Great Western Hospitals NHS Trust.
Any other reports, such as the ‘How many people have recovered‘ article will have the source of information included so if you feel you want to go and check it out, you can. In that instance the information has come from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
You will note though, at the time of writing that article, the number of UK cases reported on CSSE is 14,751.
At the same time Public Health England are reporting a lower figure at 14,543 to confuse things even more if you were to use the CovidLive Tracker you will see that there are 14,569 cases reported, yet another different figure.
It all comes down to the different times that each one of these run their reports.
Public Health England for instance use the UK deaths count as of 17:00 on the day prior to the reporting date, CovidLive Tracker use the figure as at 20:00 and the the CSSE is reporting with about an hour delay. – Confusing I know.
For clarity, we will going forward only be reporting the number we receive on a daily basis from NHS England.
Our tip to you, to ensure you are kept up to date without any confusion, pick a source and stick to it!
Until each of the reporting bodies use the same cut off time the figures will continue to be different.
