It is possible that Covid-19 cases in England will no longer fall, and could even have increased at the start of the country’s third national closure, according to a lengthy study by Imperial College London.
The researchers analyzed swab tests from 142,000 volunteers from January 6 to 15 and found that infections increased by 50% compared to early December, with 1 in 63 people infected in the country.
About 1.58% of people tested positive for the virus during the early January round of the study, the highest prevalence recorded since May. This is an increase of 50% over the previous round in early December 2020.
“The prevalence is very, very high compared to our last survey in which we saw this rise in December when this new variant came in,” Paul Elliott, director of the REACT program at Imperial College London in the UK, said on Thursday. BBC Today Program.
“But we have discovered that it is equal, the value R. [or how many other people each person with coronavirus will infect] it’s around 1, so we’re in a position where levels are high and they don’t fall now in the period of this current blockade, ”Elliott said.
The study warned that “until the prevalence in the community is substantially reduced, health services will remain under extreme pressure and the cumulative number of lives lost during this pandemic will continue to increase rapidly.”
The findings are at odds with the latest figures from the UK government which had shown a decline in new daily cases reported earlier in the week.
Elliott said Thursday that he believes this discrepancy may be the result of the REACT study testing people randomly, rather than those showing symptoms, and government data that do not yet reflect an increase in population mobility after Christmas.
Speaking to Sky News on Thursday, UK Education Minister Gavin Williamson said “the evidence we’ve been seeing is that [the lockdown] it has had an impact in terms of easing some of that pressure on the NHS, so the NHS is able to cope, but of course the government is always looking for all the available evidence. ”
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock tweeted on Thursday that “these findings show why we should not lower our guard over the next few weeks. Infections across England are at very high levels and it is crucial that everyone do your part to bring them down. “
The UK recorded 38,905 new coronavirus cases and 1,820 more coronavirus-related deaths on Wednesday, the highest daily increase in deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to Public Health England data.