Cases of coronavirus are rising rapidly in England, according to new figures that suggest there were about 27,900 new cases every day in the community in early October.
Data from the Office for National Statistics, based on swab testing of randomly selected households, show that between 2 to 8 October, around 1 in 160 people in the community in England had Covid – a substantial rise from the previous week, when an estimated 1 in 240 people had the disease, with about 17,200 new cases a day.
The government has said the latest R value for the UK, the number of people each infected person goes on to infect, is between 1.3 to 1.5 for the UK and 1.2 to 1.4 for England alone, with the number of new infections in the UK growing by between 4% and 7% every day.
“Looking at trends over time, there is now growth in positivity in every region of England,” the ONS report notes.
The government R values and growth rate data also show that infections are rising across the whole country, with R above 1 in all regions of England – although the team behind these figures stress that the estimates best represent the spread of Covid over the past few weeks due to time lags in the data used.
Infection rates vary between regions. According to the ONS figures, about 1.3% of the population in the north-west is thought to have had Covid on 5 October, compared with just 0.3% in the south-east, although there is uncertainty in the exact figures.
The report adds that while prevalence is highest in the north-west, the north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber, only the former is showing continued growth, with prevalence now steady in the other two regions. “This could be a temporary pause in growth or indicate a levelling-off. ,” the team write.
As seen in previous reports, Covid rates are highest among older teenagers and young adults, with an estimated 1.45% of those in school year 12 to age 24 years having Covid on 5 October. But the report warns that cases are also rising in all other age groups – except among those aged 70 and over.
The report offers a glimmer of good news for Wales and Northern Ireland. “For Wales, the estimate shows there is some evidence that positivity rates may now have levelled off, although uncertainty is high,” the team write.
The north-south divide in Covid infections is also seen in data released by researchers behind the Covid symptom study app. In the two weeks to 11 October, the team estimates there were on average 27,762 daily new symptomatic cases of Covid in the community in the UK. But while the north-west had on average 7,313 new cases a day, the south-west had just 1,279 a day, and the south-east 1,417 a day.
Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, who is leading the study, said the north-west appears to have a doubling time in cases of about 10 days. “Slowing this rapid rise is a priority,” he said.
