Nottinghamshire’s R rate – the rate of infection spread for coronavirus is less than 1.
Public Health bosses for the city and county have confirmed that the rate stands at 0.7 – 1.1 – based on modelling up to last week.
The range of 0.7-1.1 is an estimate based on latest data available to determine infection and transmission rates. Data such as contacts, hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths generally takes 2 to 3 weeks for changes in R to be reflected in these data sources, due to the time between infection and needing hospital care.
As data on infection is estimated through data on symptomatic cases, hospitalisations, or deaths, there is a delay of around 2 to 3 weeks because as there is a lag between people between people becoming infected, entering hospital, and dying. Consequently, this range applies to data before the recent adjustments to the restrictions the government has put in place earlier this week.
An R number of 1 means that on average every person who is infected will infect 1 other person, meaning the total number of new infections is stable. If R is 2, on average, each infected person infects 2 more people. If R is 0.5 then on average for each 2 infected people, there will be only 1 new infection. If R is greater than 1 the epidemic is generally seen to be growing, if R is less than 1 the epidemic is shrinking.
SAGE is confident that overall the R is not above 1. This means that the number of infections is not increasing, and is very likely to be decreasing.
R can change over time. For example, it falls when there is a reduction in the number of contacts between people, which reduces transmission.
