The percentage of people testing positive for coronavirus has stopped falling, data has revealed, as government research suggested the UK could see as many as 160,000 excess deaths by the end of February.
According to data published on Friday from the Office for National Statistics, which conducts a survey based on swabs from randomly selected households, about 1 in 55 people in the community in England had Covid in the week ending 23 January – the same proportion as was reported last week, down from 1 in 50 around the start of the year.
“The percentage of people testing positive remains high in England and is similar to last week’s estimate,” the team report.
The ONS says the positivity rate also appears to have levelled off throughout the UK, with 1 in 70 people in Wales, 1 in 50 in Northern Ireland and 1 in 110 people in Scotland found to have Covid in the most recent week.
The new data came as a document submitted to the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) from the Department of Health and Social Care, ONS and the Government Actuary’s Department and Home Office revealed grim scenarios for this winter.
Looking at a possible winter scenario covering October to the end of February, the research – dated 17 December – suggested England could see 100,000 excess deaths over that period, 70,000 of which would be down to Covid. The team estimated 61,000 excess deaths may already have occurred between March and September. Excess deaths are the number of fatalities above the five-year average.
The scenario, which the team stressed was not a prediction, was based on a situation where levels of infections rise through October and November followed by a slow decline after peaking in early December, with a high of 5,200 deaths in the worst week. According to government figures, deaths are only now beginning to peak, with 6,767 deaths in England registered as involving Covid in the second week of January.
However, Dr Jason Oke, a senior statistician at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, said the excess deaths over winter within the scenario seemed excessive, give recent data: “If the current trend were to continue then excess deaths will be far lower than 100k.”
An estimated 1.87% of people in England had coronavirus in the week ending 23 January 2021
On Friday, the latest R figure, which reflects the average number of people an infected person passes the virus to, was revealed by Sage to be between 0.7 and 1.1 for the UK and between 0.7 and 1.0 for England, reflecting the situation over the past few weeks. If R is above 1 the epidemic is growing; below 1 it is shrinking.
The ONS study on Covid infection rates revealed regional variations around England, with some regions showing a slight decline in the percentage of people testing positive in the most recent week, and others levelling off.
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The positivity rate remains highest in London, with 1 in 35 people thought to have had Covid in the most recent week, the same figure as the week before. The rate is now lowest in Yorkshire and the Humber.
Meanwhile, the percentage of cases thought to involve the new, highly contagious UK variant of the virus were stable or declining across the country, with the exception of the east Midlands.
The ONS findings of a slow overall decline in the positivity rate in England chime with another population survey, called React-1, released earlier this week from researchers at Imperial College London. This found that cases had remained level, or even risen slightly between 6 and 15 January with only a slight decline apparent in the data to 22 January.
Overall, for the whole period studied, the React-1 team estimated that about 1 in 64 people had coronavirus, while they estimated that the R number was about 0.98.
The picture is very different to that gleaned from the government’s coronavirus dashboard, which shows a sharp downturn in the number of people testing positive since early January: this data is based on tests largely carried out among people with symptoms.
One explanation could be that the ONS survey is picking up older infections than tests among people coming forward with symptoms. Changes in whether people are going for tests, or choosing to take part in surveys, might also, in part, explain the difference. Prof Graham Medley of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and a member of Sage, told the Guardian another possibility was that pillar 2 testing, reflected on the government dashboard figures, included a growing use of lateral flow tests rather than PCR tests.
“Ideally these two data streams would be separate, but even if separate, the two testing protocols will interfere with each other. For example, if people with symptoms test negative on the less sensitive LFT they might not seek a PCR test, resulting in a reduction in ascertainment,” he said. “There are other explanations, and the continued increase in prevalence of the new variant is an additional complication.”
Meanwhile the Covid symptom study led by researchers at King’s College London, which is also based on swabs largely from people with symptoms, showed cases had fallen 60% since the start of the year, but the most recent data suggests this decline may have slowed, with an estimated R value for the UK of 0.9.
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