April 26, 2020

expert reaction to latest figures on COVID-19 cases and deaths in the UK

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) a have announced the latest reported figures for cases of COVID-19 (152,840) and deaths from COVID-19 (20,732) in the UK.

Prof Philip Bath, Chair & Head Division of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Nottingham, said:

“I am not surprised that we are seeing an inverted “tick” number of deaths, i.e. up quickly and down slowly, rather than what we all would have preferred with an inverted “V”, i.e. up and down quickly. A key reason is what is the different size of the populations behind the deaths. In the UK, one high-population part of the country (London) contributed to the early increase whereas the whole country is contributing to this later phase in death rates. If we assume that the risk of death is similar across the country (which is not strictly true to demographic differences), then non-London deaths will have been increasing whilst London-ones were starting to decline. At last we are starting to see declines in deaths outside London (especially Midlands) so the decline in death rate may accelerate, but never at a rate to match the initial rate of increase. The same will be true for Italy where the north contributed to the rapid increase but the whole country is contributing to the slower decline in deaths.”

Prof James Naismith, Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute and University of Oxford, said:

“We should not draw the wrong lesson from these figures. Any decrease in announced deaths is welcome; it seems likely the normal problem with weekends will explain the unusually lower number today. The number of new infections remains in the thousands, but social distancing is working. The R value has not gone to zero, when below 1 the virus spreads but with new infections decreasing each day.  As testing capability improves we should do better at getting a true measure of the number of infected people. The thousands of new infections identified today do not suggest the virus is still spreading rapidly rather they suggest that we had a much larger number of infections than we identified before the lockdown. Such large numbers of viral infections will take time to burn out. Unfortunately, the virus takes us in an express elevator to the top of the peak but we have to find our way back down by the stairs”

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink: www.sciencemediacentre.org/covid-19/

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