Coronavirus England: infection rate drops to one in 2200

The English coronavirus outbreak no longer appears to be shrinking in the run-up to ‘Super Saturday’ as official figures today claim that 3,600 people are still infected daily.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests that 25,000 people across the country currently have Covid-19, or one in 2,200 people (0.04 percent of the population) – a huge drop from the 51,000 active cases the week before.

But the same data shows that the virus is spreading slightly faster, with an estimated 25,000 new cases in the week ending June 27 – compared to the 22,000 infections that had been in the community the previous week.

US statisticians, who projected them based on swab tests of 25,000 randomly chosen people, warned that the rate at which the outbreak is diminishing has “leveled off”.

The estimate is in line with yesterday’s forecast by Public Health England and Cambridge University academics, who claimed that up to 3,000 people are still infected every day.

This is inclusive 1,000 in the Midlands, where Leicester is based – the first British city to be hit by a ‘local closure’. Their estimate is based on modeling based on death data, antibody sampling and mobility reports.

But both guesses are much higher than those of scientists at King’s College London, who believe that about 1,200 people are knocked down every day. The academics trust people to log into a symptom recording app and confirm that they have tested positive.

Today’s US report said, “When analyzing data for the four most recent 14-day non-overlapping periods, these estimates suggest that the percentage of positive tests has declined over time since our first measurement on April 26 , and this downward trend now seems to have leveled out.

The latest confidence intervals overlap with the previous two time periods.

“This suggests that the actual number of individuals who tested positive in the period from June 14 to June 27, 2020 may be higher or lower than in the two previous periods.

“Therefore, we currently have no evidence that the current trend is anything other than flat.”

King’s College London’s study yielded a much lower estimate of the number of new daily cases and has a figure that is consistently decreasing.

Both datasets – from King’s College and the ONS – are based on data for the period between June 14 and June 27.

The COVID Symptom Tracker statistics, based on 31 positive test results from 10,393 swabs, estimate that there are 1,445 new cases in the community every day in the UK. Most of them (1,225) are located in England.

Meanwhile, based on 12 positive results from 23,203 participants, the ONS data puts the weekly estimate at 25,000, or 3,571 a day.

Public Health England and Cambridge University yesterday predicted that up to 3,000 people will still be infected every day in England, including 1,000 in the Midlands.

The team claims that between 1,500 and 5,780 people contracted the virus across England on June 26, and the number has been fairly stable since early May.

The King’s College team also estimates that the Midlands are most affected, 422 of the country’s 1,225 daily cases.

It placed 215 in the northeast and Yorkshire, 185 in the southeast, 164 in the east of England, 104 in the northwest, 92 in the southwest and 84 in London.

There were another 132 a day in Wales and 88 in Scotland, the project said.

Professor Tim Spector, the epidemiologist behind the app, said the model had successfully predicted higher transmission speeds in Leicester since June 17.

The city is returning to lockdown this week because it has a high infection rate, with 140 cases per 100,000 people significantly higher than any other area.

Professor Spector said, “Now that our data is revealing potential new hotspots, we will be able to monitor more closely and conduct targeted tests that could detect problems like Leicester much earlier and hopefully reduce the number of major lockdowns.”