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Saturday, 22 August 2020_Despite the large spike in the number of positive tests reported by England's test and trace service earlier, the level of coronavirus in the community has remained stable during the past week according to the Office for National Statistics.
SAGE, the government’s scientific advisory group, now estimates the growth rate for the virus in the UK could be between -3 and +1. This means the number of new infections is somewhere between shrinking by 3 per cent and growing by 1 per cent every day.
Whitehall is hopeful that, taken as a whole, the data is indicative of a positive trend of infections in the country.
The official view is that the infection is currently focused among young people, who are less likely to become seriously ill, which is why the number of hospital admissions and deaths have not yet increased. A similar pattern was seen in the USA before the second significant spike in deaths.
Effective and timely containment of local outbreaks as they occur is now seen as vital in preventing the UK experiencing a national growth in the virus and a potential second nationwide lockdown later this autumn.
SAGE has announced that it was likely to take two to three weeks for the infections to result in increased hospital admissions and deaths.
It said: “The figures published today more accurately represent the average situation over the past few weeks rather than the situation today.
“Models that use Covid-19 testing data that have less of a time delay, have recently suggested higher values for R in England.
“For this reason, SAGE does not have confidence that R is currently below one in England. We would expect to see this change in transmission reflected in the R and growth rate published over the next few weeks as we gain more certainty of what is currently happening.”
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