COVID - Regional differences

[chaggle]

Does anyone know why there are such stark differences in incidence of COVID between regions of the UK?

I would have thought that knowing the reason for this would be pretty fundamental to fighting it but they don't seem to know or at least are not saying.

I've seen vague statements - social and working environments and so on - but nothing to really explain why there are such differences.

What is Bristol doing that is so different from Liverpool?

[Matt]

I don't know the answer but can imagine a number of factors.
Population density. The more people around you the more people you can spread it to.
Transport links. If you're on a stopping point that's on the way to multiple popular destinations then there's more potentially infectious strangers passing through.
Socio economic factors. Lockdown works better if you're middle class. We can work from home while poor people bring us things.
Starting conditions. If the infection number doubles every few days then cases arriving one town a few days earlier than another mean double the number of cases.
There's probably plenty more but those few are enough that I'd be surprised if there weren't large regional differences. The vagueness of the statements are quite possibly not because they don't have any idea but rather that they have too many to choose from.

[Tony.Williams]

I would have thought that one of the major factors is the number of university students, as they are an obvious risk in terms of carrying the virus all over the country (and a significant percentage of them seem to be rather casual about taking precautions).