Britain has reported its highest daily figure of Coronavirus infections with 33,470 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday a large increase from 22,950 on Wednesday.
It brings the total number of cases in the UK to 1,290,195 but experts say the figure comes with a warning that using the term record could be “misleading” as it is not clear how many people were actually infected during the height of the first wave, due to a lack of community testing at the time.
NHS chief Stephen Powis said it is important to look at the seven day average, which is just about 22,000, rather than one day.
Meanwhile a study, led by Imperial College London and known as REACT,says that infections doubled during October suggesting that over 1 in 80 people were infected
We’ve shown that the prevalence of infection has remained high, reinforcing the need for people to act to help bring infections down and control the virus,” said Paul Elliott, director of the programme at Imperial.
“These important data will be a critical baseline from which to determine if the new measures are effective at curbing the growth of the epidemic.”
The study said that prevalence of infection was 1.3%, meaning 130 people per 10,000 were infected, up from 60 people per 10,000 in the previous report in early October.
