Harehills ❤️ Love

One of my early posts on this blog was a call to action in response to rising cases of Coronavirus in the area. It was an unfortunate circumstance, but I believed in the article, and interactions on twitter across the month that we could beat this rise in the virus. There were just some simple things we had to do:

The great news is my faith in the people of Harehills, Gipton, and other surrounding areas bore out, we are at the moment in a much better place.

This is the latest map of cases in the area covering the 20th to 26th August:

In the map, Harehills North is in light blue at 4 cases, Harehills South is clear with 0-2 cases. The dark blue area to the North East is Ladywood and Oakwood, it currently has 10 cases so is coming down from its highs a few weeks ago.

We’ve been on quite a journey in Harehills and Gipton these past few months, borrowing some data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ I was able to drill down to the LSOA areas for Harehills and Gipton and pull together a quick chart of cases reported:

Now, this is great news, there are still cases around. There will be some some infections that haven’t been detected in any of the data because they’ve no been through testing. So we’re not out of the woods yet. However, that we’ve driven the detected cases down is a success.

The caveat is that the temporary testing facility at the Bilal centre has moved elsewhere from the 21st August, however the data suggests cases were already coming down before it closed.

Let’s keep cases down. Let’s not let up, and slip back to where the cases are on the rise.

Don’t get pulled in to the raves and big parties that are happening across the country, and closer to home. Instead, stick with social distancing, follow the simple guidance whenever, and wherever you possibly can:

But, in the meantime, thank you Harehills, you’ve proven we can beat this virus when we work together. Hold on in there.

N.B. Just a quick note, not all sources of data are equal. So there will be some variances over where things count, and when. I’m not an expert in the data I’ve used, I’ve just grabbed it from the highest authority I could find, and used some database queries to filter it down to the local area. Better researched, and more authoritative analysis should always be taken over mine. If you’ve found better sources, or better analysis, feel free to call it out to me.