A new coronavirus heat map shows that Middlesbrough has the worst offenders when it comes to flouting the ‘stay at home’ rules during the coronavirus crisis.
The ‘COVID-19 heat map’ from Evergreen Life, the NHS-backed personal health record app, shows people in the North Yorkshire town have been going outdoors the most.
Ryedale in North Yorkshire, Wandsworth in southwest London and Liverpool in Merseyside, meanwhile, are some of the regions where people have heeded the stay at home advice best.
Residents of Hull, East Cambridgeshire and Babergh in Suffolk are reporting the lowest level of symptoms per household, as of this weekend.
While parts of Wales including Swansea are reporting the highest percentage of households with symptoms, the app also reveals.
The COVID-19 heat map, which claims to help stop the spread of the viral illness, takes daily symptom and social distancing updates from its users, excluding key workers.
The heat map for iOS, Android and desktop shows data for households with reported symptoms, households with no symptoms, respondents staying at home and respondents not staying home (excluding key workers)
Evergreen Life is encouraging Brits, whether or not they have symptoms, to download their free app, submit their symptom and social distancing status and contribute to the map.
After downloading the app for iOS or Android, users need to tap the ‘Records’ section on the home screen and take the ‘Healthy at Home Check’.
‘You can help track the spread of COVID-19 by joining the thousands of people across the UK,’ said Evergreen CEO Stephen Critchlow.
Heat maps for regions where people reported not staying at home (excluding key workers, shown in pink) and staying at home (blue). The deeper shades indicate higher percentages. 25 per cent of survey respondents from Middlesbrough said they are not staying indoors – the highest in this particular data set for Saturday. Wandsworth, southwest London (97.9) and Arun, West Sussex (98.4) residents are heeding the stay at home advice the most
No symptoms in households (green) and symptoms in households (yellow). The deeper shades indicate higher percentages. Hull had the highest ‘no symptoms’ reported for Saturday, (97.5 per cent), while Swansea had the highest symptoms reported (25 per cent)
‘This will show the benefit of self-isolation and staying at home. Please download Evergreen Life and ask your friends and family to do the same.’
The Evergreen Life website said the map builds an accurate national picture which can help track the outbreak.
The app is already sending notifications to users to take the COVID Check regularly and encouraging anyone who has already answered to do so again, to track the change in symptoms over time.
More than 26,700 Evergreen Life users so far have responded to the survey on their behaviour to help build the COVID-19 heat map, which can also be viewed on a desktop.
It shows data in four categories – households with reported symptoms, households with no symptoms, respondents staying at home and respondents not staying home (excluding key workers).
As of April 4, the trackers shows that 25 per cent of survey respondents from Middlesbrough said they are not staying indoors, followed by 20.7 in Enfield, Greater London.
Also among the worst offenders for leaving the house were East and North Hertfordshire, which both had 17.6 per cent of respondents not staying at home.
The best at staying at home were the people of Ryedale, North Yorkshire, at 98.3 per cent; Wandsworth in southwest London, at 97.9; Arun in West Sussex, at 98.4 per cent; Liverpool, 97.5 per cent; and Adur, also in West Sussex, 97.5 per cent.
The respondents were also asked about symptoms of COVID-19, such as whether they have a dry cough or a temperature and if they are self-isolating, and also when they recover.
‘No symptoms in household’ was reported by 97.5 per cent of users in Hull and 96.8 per cent of those in both East Cambridgeshire and Babergh in Suffolk.
Less fortunate were users in Swansea, Pemborkeshire and neighbouring Carmarthenshire in Wales, which reported symptoms in 25 per cent, 23.8 per cent and 23.8 per cent of households, respectively.
The data will continue to become available for each day, with the latest results being Saturday, April 4, as of Monday morning.
Each set of data is visualised in both colour-coded graphs as well as a map for the app and website
The app’s developers said for an area of the country to appear on the map, it had to have enough people in the sample sizes for the percentages quoted to be statistically significant.
The anonymised data is being shared with the NHS and data scientists at the universities of Liverpool and Manchester to help them analyse the progress of the pandemic.
App users are also sent guidance to protect themselves during the crisis, with tailored advice from the NHS to those deemed to be at the greatest risk of complications from the virus.
‘Respondents are supporting a better understanding of the local experience of COVID-19 disease through sharing their data, which will be incredibly useful to national and local planning,’ said Dr Ian Hall, from the University of Manchester.
‘This is an exciting emerging data stream and I look forward to helping interpret the data, with colleagues in Manchester and Liverpool, as it provides situational awareness to users and policy makers alike.’
Evergreen Life, which was launched in 2015 in partnership with the NHS, now has 750,000 users.
By partnering with the NHS, it allows users to access all their health records in the same place as their own fitness and wellbeing data.