September 6, 2020

expert reaction 2,988 new UK cases of COVID-19 announced on 6th September

On Sunday 6th September the government announced 2,988 new COVID-19 cases in the UK.

Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, UEA, said:

“Today’s reported number of cases is the largest new cases reported in a single day since May. This is especially concerning for a Sunday when report numbers are generally lower than most other days of the week.

“Some of that increase may be because of catch up from delayed tests over the past few days due to the widely reported difficulties the UK testing service has faced dealing with the number of tests being requested. Nevertheless this represents a marked increase in the 7 day rolling average of 1812 cases/day compared to 1244 a week ago and 1040 a week before that.

“Fortunately, the daily reported numbers of deaths due to COVID-19 remain very low with a 7 day rolling average of just 7 deaths/day. However, with the new approach to recording deaths it is difficult to be confident that there are timely statistics. It with be another two or even more weeks before we can really expect to see any impact on mortality figures

“The ONS “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey pilot: England and Wales” report published on Friday concluded that “For another week, our evidence suggests that the level of infections and people who currently have COVID-19 in the community has continued to level off. However that study covered the dates 19 to 25 August 2020 and its conclusions likely to be about 1 to 2 weeks out of date.

“Sadly it is beginning to look like we are moving into a period of exponential growth in the UK epidemic and if so we can expect further increases over coming weeks.”

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

None received.