Seeing as the Scottish and Welsh executives have got assertive today about their differing approaches – nations under the respective control of the SNP and the Labour Party – it seemed to Guido like a good moment to compare their efforts on testing for Covid-19 and fighting the spread of the disease. Using data from the regional public health authorities published for May 9* it would seem that England is way ahead of the other regions. England was testing for Covid at rate far ahead of the regions…

How successful have the measures to reduce the number of cases been – when adjusted for population size? Wales had substantially more new cases compared to the other regions.

It is clear from the official figures that Scotland and Wales are doing less well when it comes to testing as well as suppressing the number of new cases. Yet their heads of government this morning seem more focused on slogans…

*A previous version of this used incorrect data published on May 9 rather than published for the date of May 9. This has now been corrected. According to Scot Gov Data 1,901 tests were done on May 9. A now deleted press release from Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer Directorate claimed 3,792 tests were carried out on May 9. We have used the official statistic.
N.B. There is a lot of disagreement about the differing methods of recording deaths. The differing ways Covid deaths are recorded in care homes arguably renders the statistics unusable. At some future point a comparison of excess deaths will be made.