When cases, hospitalisations and deaths fall to low levels, as they did in both summer 2020 and 2021, we need to find new ways to monitor trends in the epidemic. One of the ways we can do this is to calculate whether the number of confirmed infections (based on testing) in each area exceeds the number that was expected, given the number recorded across the country - this is called “exceedance”. An analysis of trends across Local Authorities in Scotland has been developed by modellers at the University of Warwick on behalf of the Scottish Government.
Numbers of positive tests recorded each day, adjusted for population of each local authority and number of cases seen in preceding weeks, should fall within a certain distribution of values, which will rise and fall depending on the number of cases being seen nationally. Areas where the number of positive test results rise above the upper 95th percentile of this distribution may be at risk of seeing increased local transmission of Covid and heightened vigilance may be required. Further information is available in issue 12 of the Modelling the Epidemic series of reports.
This model is one of a series used by the Scottish Government during the pandemic to model the spread and levels of Covid-19 in Scotland. Many of the results of these models have been published in the Modelling the Epidemic series of reports.
If you have any questions regarding the contents of this repository, please contact sgcentralanalysisdivision@gov.scot.
This repository is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0.