England’s Covid-19 outbreak grows 64% in a week as ONS estimates nearly 28,000 people were getting infected every day in the first week of October
- ONS’s daily infection estimate surged from 17,200 last week to 27,900 in this week, for data up to October 8
- The statistical body admits ‘the number of infections has continued to increase rapidly in recent weeks’
- Around 336,000 people – one in every 160 people in England – were carrying the virus on October 8, it said
- Separate estimates from King’s College London suggest England has 21,000 new infections each day
- But both datasets point to a slower rate of increase than seen in September: ‘No longer exponential’
Advertisement
The number of people catching coronavirus in England is still spiralling and there were an estimated 27,900 new infections per day in the first week of this month, according to the ONS.
Weekly Office for National Statistics data showed that in the week ending October 8 a total of 336,500 people were infected at any one time.
One in every 160 people may have been carrying the virus during that week and the ONS said: ‘The number of infections has continued to increase rapidly in recent weeks.’
Separate estimates from the Covid Symptom Study by King’s College London agreed that daily infections are still rising – for the eighth week in a row.
That weekly prediction said there are now around 21,600 people catching the virus each day in England, alongside 27,800 across the UK as a whole.
But both studies – which release data once a week to estimate the true scale of Britain’s ongoing outbreak – suggested that the speed at which the crisis is escalating has dropped. While the ONS’s estimate of daily infections more than doubled from 8,400 to 17,200 at the end of September – a 104 per cent increase – this week’s figures marked a rise of 64 per cent.
And the increase in King’s College’s project has slowed, too, with it projecting a rise of more than 116 per cent in mid-September but this has since dropped to 28 per cent in the most recent week, to October 11.
Professor Tim Spector, who leads the Covid Symptom Study, said today: ‘The data is no longer showing the exponential increases that we were seeing a couple of weeks ago, but is clearly showing new cases continuing to rise.’
The ONS estimates that around 0.62 per cent of the population of England was infected with coronavirus during the week from October 2 to October 8.
This is the highest estimate it has produced since data began in late April and a marked surge from 0.41 per cent a week earlier (ending October 1).
‘In recent weeks there has been clear evidence of an increase in the number of people testing positive for Covid-19,’ the report said, ‘with the current rates highest in older teenagers and young adults.
‘Smaller increases are also apparent across all of the other age groups, apart from individuals aged 70 and over.
‘There is clear evidence of variation in Covid-19 infection rates across the regions of England, with highest rates seen in the North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, and the North East, which have all seen steep increases in recent weeks.’