Britain announces 176 more Covid-19 deaths

Britain today announced 176 more coronavirus deaths as government experts estimated up to 3,000 people are still getting infected each day in England but the crucial R rate has dropped in every region.

Department of Health chiefs say the official number of laboratory-confirmed victims now stands at 43,906 — but separate government figures show the UK topped the dreaded 50,000 mark a month ago.  

Britain recorded more than 1,000 daily fatalities during the darkest days of its crisis but the outbreak has slowed drastically in the past month. For comparison, only 155 deaths were recorded yesterday.

Government data shows 154 Covid-19 victims were recorded last Wednesday, followed by 184 and 250 in the two weeks before. 

But the rolling seven-day average of daily deaths is still 118, exactly the same as it was this point last week. Analysis shows it is the first Wednesday to Wednesday period since the start of April that the daily average hasn’t dropped. 

Separate data released today — by a team at Public Health England and Cambridge University — predicted up to 3,000 people are still getting infected in England every day, including 1,000 in the Midlands.

The rate is in line with figures from a separate government-run Covid-19 surveillance testing scheme, as well as data from a symptom-tracking app, which suggest the speed at which the outbreak is shrinking is levelling off. 

The team believe the R rate has dropped in every region to be between 0.7-0.9, putting it in line with the official figure given by SAGE after last month saying it had risen to above the dreaded level of one in several regions. 

In other coronavirus developments in Britain today:

• Leicester-style local lockdowns are ‘just days away’ from being imposed after dozens of towns and cities saw coronavirus cases surge in the past week, government sources claimed;  
• Donald Trump was accused of ‘undermining’ the global Covid-19 fight by buying up almost the entire global supply of remdesivir — one of only two drugs approved to treat the disease on the NHS;
• Turkey said it expects to be included in the UK’s plan for quarantine-free air bridges to kick start holidays — as the release of a list of safe countries was delayed again;
• Retailer John Lewis is expected to axe stores and workers as well as jobs at its sister business Waitrose while Harrods revealed it must slash around 700 posts as coronavirus continues to choke Britain’s high streets;
• Prominent Tory MP David Davis accused Public Health England of being ‘over-controlling’ amid mounting pressure on Number 10 to scrap the agency over its handling of the Covid-19 crisis;
• Covid-19 may cause priapism, doctors have warned after an infected 62-year-old in France was struck down with an erection that lasted longer than four hours; 
• Around 1,000 grieving relatives of coronavirus victims are preparing legal action to force a public inquiry after accusing the government of ‘gambling’ with lives by failing to lock down fast enough.

Department of Health figures released today showed 226,398 tests were carried out or posted the day before. The number includes antibody tests for frontline NHS and care workers.

But bosses again refused to say how many people were tested, meaning the exact number of Brits who have been swabbed for the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been a mystery for a month — since May 22.

Health chiefs also reported 829 more cases of Covid-19. Government statistics show the official size of the UK’s  outbreak now stands at 313,483 cases. But the actual size of the outbreak is estimated to be in the millions, based on antibody testing data.

The daily death data does not represent how many Covid-19 patients died within the last 24 hours — it is only how many fatalities have been reported and registered with the authorities.

The data does not always match updates provided by the home nations. Department of Health officials work off a different time cut-off, meaning daily updates from Scotland as well as Northern Ireland are always out of sync.

And the count announced by NHS England every afternoon — which only takes into account deaths in hospitals — does not match up with the DH figures because they work off a different recording system.

For instance, some deaths announced by NHS England bosses will have already been counted by the Department of Health, which records fatalities ‘as soon as they are available’. 

NHS England today posted 50 deaths in hospitals across the country. Wales recorded six Covid-19 fatalities in all settings, followed by one in Scotland and none again in Northern Ireland.  

The death figures come as a PHE/Cambridge team updated their real-time estimates of the coronavirus outbreak in England.

The model — based on death data from NHS England and regional health officials, antibody surveillance sampling and mobility reports — estimated that 5.16million people across the country (9 per cent of the population) has already had the coronavirus.

Academics behind the modelling predicted that 5.62million people had been infected across the country in its projection at the start of June.

The rate is similar to data seen from a separate antibody surveillance scheme carried out by PHE, which suggested the rate was 8.5 per cent.

But it is higher than data from a separate ONS sample, which has previously put the national level of infection at around 6.78 per cent. 

Analysis of the PHE/Cambridge data showed London has been, by far, the worst-hit region of England (18 per cent). At the peak of the capital’s crisis – said to be the same day lockdown was imposed – 140,000 are thought to have caught the infection.

In comparison, only 3 per cent of people in the South West are thought to have been struck down by the coronavirus.

The team claim between 1,500 and 5,780 people caught the virus across England on June 26 and that the rate has been fairly stable since the start of May.

The team calculated that the crucial ‘R’ reproduction rate fell to just 0.46 in the capital in the aftermath of the lockdown being introduced.

However, the rate in London — as well as other regions — slowly began to creep up to between 0.8 and 0.9 by mid-May but has dropped or remained stable in the past month.

At the beginning of the outbreak London was the worst affected region but the latest numbers suggest it is now ahead of all but two regions in terms of recovery.

The data, published by the university, suggests London is recording just 290 cases each day – behind only the South West (68) and the North East (155).

In contrast, the Midlands – home to Leicester – is recording 1,030 daily infections and has an R rate of 0.89, the highest for any region in the country.

Keeping the rate below one is considered key to easing lockdown because it means the outbreak is shrinking as not everyone who catches it passes it on.

If the figure rises higher, it means people infected with the virus are spreading it to others at a rate faster than one-to-one, which could see the disease spiral out of control once again.

Government advisers last week claimed the R rate for the UK and England remains between 0.7 and 0.9 for the third week in a row. But they admitted it could be as high as 1.0 in the North West.

Meanwhile, the PHE/Cambridge team’s modelling shows only one death occurs in every 91 cases – giving it an infection-fatality rate of around 1.1 per cent. 

Studies conducted around the world have produced a slightly lower figure, suggesting it is up to eight times deadlier than seasonal flu – which kills 0.1 per cent of cases.

The PHE/Cambridge team admitted the actual infection-fatality rate could be as low as 0.79 or as high as 1.4 per cent.

And the study showed huge variation between different age groups, warning the virus has an infection-fatality rate of around 17 per cent for over-75s. 

But it is below 0.027 per cent for anyone under the age of 44 – the equivalent of one death for every 3,700 coronavirus cases.

For people between the ages of 45 and 64, the team said the death rate was around 0.41 per cent while the rate was approximately 2.7 per cent for people aged between 65 and 74.

The number of people catching the coronavirus each day in England remains a mystery — official estimates last month revealed wildly varying statistics.

Public Health England and the University of Cambridge experts predicted 16,700 new infections were cropping up each day.

But the Office for National Statistics, which calculates a weekly measure, suggested that only 5,570 people are catching the virus on a daily basis, on average. And an unofficial app being run by King’s College London, based on people self-reporting their symptoms, even estimated there were 9,400 new cases each day.

But all three of the most recent estimates made by each team are now very close to each other.

For example, Public Health England and Cambridge, who aim to give a snapshot of the entire nation, now say cases have dropped to below 3,000.

The ONS’s most recent estimate — of 3,100 daily cases — is based on swab testing samples of 25,000 people. It predicts only new cases in the community, not hospital patients who people who live in institutions or homes. 

The app run by King’s College, on the other hand, only counts people who get symptoms — and many don’t. It put the most recent estimate as low as 1,900 daily cases last week.

All the figures should be taken with a pinch of salt and used together, scientists say.

Testing figures do not show the true number of people infected because many people catch the virus but never test positive for it, either because they don’t realise they are sick, because they couldn’t get a test, or because their result was wrong.