Britain records 33,470 new Covid-19 cases as infections jump 38.6% in a week – even though several different estimates say outbreak has slowed
Britain today announced another 33,470 positive coronavirus cases – 39 per cent more than last Thursday – despite indicators showing the outbreak is slowing down.
The case count is the highest since the Covid-19 outbreak began and comes a week after England’s second national lockdown started.
Unofficial statistics, however, suggest that the country’s outbreak had already started to slow down and shrink before the lockdown began on November 5, and it is expected to continue shrinking throughout November during the stringent rules.
Scientists on the Covid Symptom Study claimed today the R rate of the coronavirus across all of Britain is now 0.9 meaning the outbreak has started shrinking and the ‘end is in sight’ for the second wave
The Covid Symptom Study now suggests that some 35,963 people are catching symptomatic Covid-19 each day in Britain, down from 44,000 per day at the end of October. The graph shows how the total number of people with symptomatic Covid-19 each day has also started to drop
The REACT-1 project — which has been swabbing tens of thousands of people every week — found there had been a significant slowdown in infections heading into November following a wave of new cases in the two months prior
Imperial College London experts behind the research said the drop was observed ‘right across the country, both North and South, and was not being driven by any one region’ — suggesting the three-tiered system of curbs was just starting to take effect before ministers caved and hit the lockdown panic button
Professor Spector said new coronavirus infections are declining across England, and now sit – for the whole UK – at around 36,000 per day