England’s Covid-19 outbreak has stopped shrinking: Up to 3,600 people are still catching the virus each day – but only one in 2,200 people are currently infected, official data shows
- Estimates from Office for National Statistics suggest 0.04% have Covid-19
- This is the lowest estimate so far from its national testing programme
- But weekly cases remain high at 25,000 new infections every seven days
- King’s College London researchers suggest just 1,225 new infections per day
The coronavirus outbreak in England appears to have stopped slowing down and officials estimate around 3,600 people are still catching it every day.
Office for National Statistics data, published today, suggests 25,000 people in England currently have Covid-19 and 25,000 are catching it each week.
This marks a shrinking in the total number of people infected – which was last week thought to be 51,000 – but shows the virus is spreading at a slightly faster rate.
Last week’s release predicted that there were 22,000 people catching it each week.
Separate data from King’s College London, which is running the COVID Symptom Tracker mobile app, estimates that the rate of infection is actually just 1,225 per day.
Both are based on small numbers of positive tests but the ONS has tests sent to a population sample while the Symptom Tracker app relies on people logging in and using it themselves.
The ONS data suggests only one in every 2,200 people outside of hospitals or care homes have the virus – some 0.04 per cent of the population and its lowest guess yet.
It warns, however, than an earlier trend of the outbreak shrinking each week has ‘levelled off’ and stopped declining.
Today’s ONS report said: ‘When analysing data for the four most recent non-overlapping 14-day periods, these estimates suggest the percentage testing positive has decreased over time since our first measurement on 26 April, and this downward trend appears to have now levelled off.
‘The latest confidence intervals overlap with the previous two time periods.
‘This suggests that the actual number of individuals testing positive in the period 14 June to 27 June 2020 could be higher or lower than in the two previous periods.
‘Therefore, at this point, we do not have evidence that the current trend is anything other than flat.’
In separate data on just over 3,200 people given an antibody test, around six per cent of the population are thought to have antibodies against coronavirus.
This equates to one in 16 or 2.8million people in England.