Covid-19 in London

Covid-19 in London

The prevalence of new cases in the 32 boroughs of Greater London

Some older browsers/devices may be unable to load the interactive visualisation with London details. Assuming you can view it, you can examine the evolution of the case rates by clicking (or tapping) on the timeline at the bottom of the chart. Then you can slide either end point of the timeline if you wish. You can add a comparison with some reporting area(s) outside London by clicking “⊕ Add region” and selecting your desired option(s). You may want to simplify the chart by removing some of the boroughs, which can be achieved by clicking “⊕ Add region” and deselecting some of the checked boxes.

 
Extracted from Our World in Data’s visu­al­i­sa­tions of the pandemic in the UK, the inter­ac­tive chart above shows the latest preva­lence of covid-19 by London borough. New case rates in the worst affected boroughs are around four times higher than those in the least affected boroughs (up from 2½ times higher a couple of weeks ago).

London has fallen from being the worst affected UK region in late December and early January to being among the least affected English regions now. When this page was last updated new case rates were contin­uing to fall in most metro­pol­itan boroughs, with the notable excep­tions of Hounslow and Merton.

In the early stages of the present wave, geograph­ical factors seemed to be playing the biggest part in the vari­a­tions: the counties of Kent and Essex were partic­u­larly badly affected in November and December 2020 and the London boroughs closest to those counties undoubt­edly expe­ri­enced high rates of local trans­mis­sion. The relevant boroughs included Bexley, Havering, Barking & Dagenham and Redbridge. However, other factors now seem to have assumed greater signif­i­cance. The boroughs currently topping the table tend to be signif­i­cantly poorer than those at the bottom – and to have higher propor­tions of ethnic minority residents, espe­cially those of south Asian heritage. There are also consid­er­able vari­a­tions within boroughs. In the London Borough of Ealing, for example, case rates in Southall are much higher than they are in Ealing itself.

In most of the London boroughs, new case rates started to fall during the first week of the new year and hospital admis­sions began to decline around 9/10 January. Soon after­wards, death rates began to plateau and they are now declining nation­wide, and espe­cially in London, which is presently several days ahead of the country as a whole in terms of its recovery from the most recent wave of covid-19.

Text last updated 22 February 2021. The charts are auto­mat­i­cally updated daily, usually around 5pm, UK time.