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Prof Paul Hunter sent us this comment in response to media reports of comments from Andrea Ammon yesterday [Monday 4th April], director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, UEA, said:
“Andrea Ammon (the director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)) is reported to have told MEPs that the UK, along with a small number of other countries, stood out as showing “no substantial changes in the last 14 days”. I think she has not properly understood the UK data, basing her judgement on total test results at a time when we are dramatically increasing testing rather than on comparisons that are historically valid.
“As I have previously pointed out one of the effects of dramatically increasing the amount of testing you do is that that you identify more cases. So the total number of cases may appear to increase but this does not mean the actual number of cases in the country are increasing. To get an idea of the whether or not the epidemic is changing you have to look at the breakdown of test types. Pillar 1 testing (swab testing in PHE labs and NHS hospitals for those with a clinical need, and health and care workers) is what you need to look at to determine progress. As can be seen from the attached graphs there has been a sustained decline in positives from Pillar 1 testing. Using the 7 day rolling mean value to remove day of the week effects, we had a peak of 4487 cases on the 11th of April and on 1st May this was only 2532, a decline of 44% over 20 days . The daily number of deaths have also declined 35% during this same period. The ECDC Director’s statement does not reflect the reality of the progress of the epidemic in the UK.
“The misleading statement from the Director of ECDC reminds us to be careful about making conclusions about trends in a single country when testing protocols and practices are changing.”
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink: www.sciencemediacentre.org/covid-19/
Declared interests
None received.