THE first key data since Freedom Day shows signs Britain’s Covid wave is slowing, but experts have warned “it’s too early to say” if we’re over the worst of it yet.
It comes after official UK case numbers steadily dropped over the past week, in a promising signal the Delta peak has ended.
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But the latest figures from the biggest Covid survey in England by the Office for National Statistics today revealed a slightly more plateaued picture, when compared to Government stats.
The deputy director behind the study said: “The latest ONS data suggest infections have continued to increase in England, though there are possible signs that the rate of increase may have slowed.”
Going up to July 24, five days after the easing of lockdown, the ONS randomly tested people in all four nations.
It found cases are slightly increasing, but at a less feverish pace than at the beginning of the month when Delta rampaged throughout the country.
It comes as:
Hospital admissions for youngsters aged 15 to 24 years have reached their highest rate in England since the peak in January this year, but not at overly worrying numbers.
However, cases and hospitalisations in Scotland appear to be going down in the report, after infections there seem to have peaked earlier.
The latest figures, hailed by experts as the most important ones to study after the dramatic fall in the Government’s log, show a less plunging trend – due to weeding out more cases.
The ONS data revealed around 40 per cent of the positive cases found in the latest testing came from people not showing any symptoms.
This means a large percentage of Covid cases may not be picked up in Government PCR testing, because the patients don’t know they have it, and so aren’t reflected in the official numbers.
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Duncan Cook, deputy director, said: “These new official statistics do not reflect the recent dip in the daily testing figures in England, so it’s important to understand the differences between the two sources.
“Our survey tests a large randomised sample of the population and provides an independent estimate of infections in the wider community.
“It’s notable that around 40 per cent of positive tests in the ONS study are from people who show no symptoms of infection. This group is therefore less likely to show up in the daily figures.
“Together with our partners across the UK we will continue to investigate whether the current wave of infections is stabilising or not. On that it remains too early to say.”
This mirrors similar findings from the ZOE Symptom Study – another important tool in the UK’s virus tracking arsenal.
The ZOE study tracks the outbreak by using symptoms reported by app users.
Professor Tim Spector, head of the app, said of the falling Government statistics yesterday: “To me it looks a bit fishy. It looks as if there is some other explanation than other the virus has given up.”
The NHS says you need a high temperature, new persistent cough or loss of taste and smell in order to get a free PCR test, with the Professor thinking many Brits with the virus being told they don’t qualify for a test.
The key three data sets:
Covid infection numbers and surveys have been key in keeping tabs on how quickly the virus has spread throughout the pandemic.
The three main data sets that have been the most useful are the Government daily case releases, the ZOE Symptom Study app and the infection surveys.
But they work slightly differently and use different methods of collecting data.
The Government daily cases come from positive PCR tests – but these are only given out if people fit certain symptom criteria or choose to get one. They are released each day, for the previous day.
The Zoe Symptom Study app collects information by people logging how they feel each day regardless of being officially infected, listing symptoms and if they have tested positive. They are released each week for the week before.
The ONS infection survey is the biggest of the lot – randomly asking people to have a test even if they don’t have symptoms and reporting those results. They are released each week for the week before.
Prof Spector said: “Most symptoms people are presenting with are atypical, they are not the fever, loss smell, cough.
“Therefore people aren’t getting a test, and we know many of you told to self isolate are being asked about symptoms, and when you report getting flu like symptoms you’re told it’s not Covid, you’re not allowed to get a test.”
It comes as the official R rate in England has dropped for the first time in weeks.
Despite there now being one in 65 people with Covid in the country, the R rate sits between 1.1 and 1.4 – the first time its been as low as 1.1 since July 2.
Dr Simon Clarke, Associate Professor in Cellular Microbiology at the University of Reading, said: “These ONS data are for the week ending 24 July, a period we were led to believe of declining infections.
“Overall, we are seeing chaotic datasets that reflect a lot of different things happening at the same time.
“It’s important to remember that different data sets report different things.
“Daily infection numbers rely largely on self-reporting, but these ONS data use large scale sampling, across the country and in an unbiased way, giving us a more reliable indication of the considerable numbers of infections.”
SIGNS OF SLOWING
Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, The Norwich School of Medicine, University of East Anglia, warned that while the picture looked good, it was only a few days after July 19.
He added: “We will have to wait till next week before we can see any indication of the recent decline in cases.
“Generally changes in ONS data lag about two weeks behind daily cases data.”
It comes after a scientists said the UK won’t have to lockdown again to contain Covid as the country is close to herd immunity, a scientist has said.
Dr David Matthews, of Bristol University, told the Mirror: “I suspect we are close to a herd immunity of sorts. I don’t think it’s likely we will see restrictions again.
“Herd immunity will mean that Covid hospitalisations will slow down to manageable trickle so the NHS can start trying to deal with its huge backlog.
“People should not think if we get to a level of herd immunity they don’t have to bother getting vaccinated.
“The vaccine is doing its job and stopping people ending up in hospital it’s not stopping the virus spreading around.”
Together with our partners across the UK we will continue to investigate whether the current wave of infections is stabilising or not. On that it remains too early to say.
Duncan Cook
Herd immunity refers to where enough people in a population have immunity to infection to be able to effectively stop that disease from spreading.
Nearly 92 per cent of adults have Covid antibodies now, according to the ONS, and a large swathe of under-18s have also been infected, which will all help on the way to immunity.
University College London has estimated the UK’s population immunity is at 87 per cent, with the Delta variant moving herd immunity threshold to 93 per cent.
Dr Meaghan Kall, an epidemiologist at Public Health England, said antibody data indicates those over the age of 24 are “very close to herd immunity”.
It comes after a week where case numbers steadily dropped for seven days straight.
Experts have said this shows vaccines are working alongside natural immunity from past infections to beat back the virus.
But Prof Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, The Open University, said: “Many statisticians and epidemiologists, including me, were somewhat surprised by the fall, and it’s still not clear what the reasons for it might be.
“One possibility, though, is that, to some extent at least, it might not represent a true fall in the number of new cases.
“The new case counts on the dashboard come from numbers of people testing positive for the virus, so they depend on how many people turn up to be tested, and on why people are being tested.
“If those things change, that might cause changes in the numbers of confirmed cases that do not properly reflect what is actually going on in the country, in terms of infections.”
Source: Sun
