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The Chief Medical Officer for England, Prof Chris Whitty, has confirmed there are now 590 cases of COVID-19 in the UK, an increase of 134 in 24 hours
Prof Sheila Bird, Formerly Programme Leader, MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, said:
“Although today’s is the largest increase, the UK’s 5-day increase in new cases has roughly doubled: from 1 March 2020 [12 or 13 new cases] thro’ 5th March [30 new cases] to 9th March [46 new cases] to 13th March [to follow tomorrow], as would be expected initially for the COVID-19 epidemic.
“Cumulative cases have increased from 40 on 2nd March 2020 to 456 on 11th March: their rate of increase per 2-days was doubling initially but now reduced to being multiplied by 1.6. One possible interpretation is that the UK public has reacted commendably well to the government’s and CMOs’ hand-washing and self-isolation messages. However, before ascribing cause, we need to take into account that UK has altered its approach to testing –with bespoke surveillance streams in addition to contact tracing and NHS 111-arranged testing – and increased capacity for testing. Also, that these rates may be a bit different by sample-date rather than report-date; and when route into testing is heeded.
“Reporting by sample-date and testing-avenue are important. So too is information on the age-distribution of each successive 200 cases as we may anticipate drift in the age-distribution both when UK-based transmission dominates and as extra precautions are introduced – not precipitately but to be effective by being “on-time & timely”.”
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:
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19
The SMC also produced a Factsheet on COVID-19 which is available here:
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/smc-novel-coronavirus-factsheet/
Declared interests
None received.