Whisper it, but there are — perhaps — signs that it could be safe to press ahead with planning for Christmas.
Surveys that track the coronavirus pandemic in the UK suggest that infection rates might have stopped increasing.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) today estimated that one person in 50 in England was infected with coronavirus in the week ending October 30, the same level as the week before.
It also shows infections falling in children of secondary school age “for the first time in several weeks”. Analysts said 7.4 per cent of secondary school pupils in England, just over one pupil in 15, would have tested positive in the week ending October 30, down from 8.9 per cent the week before.
The ONS said the week-on-week trend in cases was “uncertain”, although looking at numbers over a fortnight suggested a slowing rise.
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The release of the figures follows the Zoe Covid study, which uses symptom data and test results from app users to produce its estimates. Yesterday it said cases were down by 4.7 per cent on the week before.
Professor Tim Spector, lead scientist on the Zoe Covid study, said we could be “over the last great peak of Covid in 2021”.
“This is driven in large part by declining cases in children who have been on half-term holidays and by high rates of previous infection, but we’re hopeful that the trend will continue.”
Scientists with Imperial College’s React study, also tracking UK case numbers, reported a similar downward trend in cases at the end of October, although they warned this could be temporary and driven by half term.
The decrease does seem to be driven by a falling number of infections in children but this might not be due simply to lower levels of testing over half term. Today is a week on from the holiday and there were 34,029 new cases reported by the government’s coronavirus dashboard, with the seven-day average continuing to go down.
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It should be stressed that one person in 50 being infected with coronavirus is a high rate and experts said it would take work to bring that lower, using a combination of precautions such as masks and social distancing as well as the rollout of the booster vaccine.
The overall number of cases is not all that matters. Who is being infected is also key. Older people are more likely to need hospital treatment or to die after infection. Cases are continuing to rise in some older age groups.
Today’s ONS figures show cases rising in those aged between school year 12 and age 24, and in those aged 50 to 69. People over 70 have also seen an increase in the latest fortnight.
Those rising rates will be watched closely by ministers for any sign that the NHS could start to struggle.
In England, a persistent rise in hospital admissions might have stalled. There were 807 new Covid-related admissions reported on Wednesday. The previous week the figure was 955.
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There is no such signal in death statistics yet. Today there were 193 deaths reported across the UK within 28 days of a positive test, up 12.3 per cent on the week before. That equates to a yearly rate of more than 62,000 deaths.
The booster jabs programme will be key. As it continues to take effect there are high hopes that cases in older age groups, and therefore hospital admissions and deaths, will also start to fall.
The mood music is beginning to sound optimistic, but commenting on the Zoe data, Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, said: “If we’ve learnt anything in the last 18 months, it’s that infection trends can turn on a dime and that we should not be tempted into making attention-grabbing predictions. That the future remains uncertain is our only current certainty.”
Of all the regions in the ONS survey, the highest prevalence was found in the southwest, where 2.9 per cent of people tested positive. This was also the region most affected by the failure of a testing laboratory run by Immensa. It is believed that at least 43,000 people were told they were negative when they had Covid.
Scientists said the ONS figures, which tally with those from Imperial College’s React survey, show the consequences of that failure.
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Sheila Bird, from the MRC Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge, said it was crucial to understand what happened, and there were still questions to be answered about the scandal.
“There is a public responsibility to explain what went on, how it came about, how early the surveillance system was aware of the problem — as opposed to being alerted to it by the public and the press. There’s not clarity about it as yet.”
She said it only seemed to come to light because of the number of people testing positive on lateral flows then negative on laboratory tests. If that was indeed what alerted authorities, then she said it was not good enough.
“If we had not had the canary of the lateral flow test, how long would this have gone on?”
Today a note on documents produced for Sage, the government advisory committee, by its modelling groups said that the Immensa issue had made it harder to predict the course of the epidemic.
