England, Scotland and Wales declare 33 new Covid-19 deaths

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Britain today recorded 6,634 more cases of coronavirus and 40 deaths as figures show infections have doubled in a week.

Yvonne Doyle, Public Health England’s medical director, confirmed the rise in infections and deaths after the Government’s Covid-19 dashboard went down with technical difficulties this afternoon. 

Today’s record-high daily cases take the total infection toll to 416,363, although millions of Brits went undiagnosed during the first wave of the pandemic due the government’s lacklustre testing regime. Top experts say more than 100,000 people were actually catching the virus every day during the darkest days of the first wave.     

The 6,634 new infections in the last 24 hours mark a twofold rise compared to last Thursday, when 3,395 people were diagnosed with the disease. Yesterday saw another 6,178 infections recorded and there were just shy of 5,000 new cases on Tuesday. 

Professor Doyle said the trend was a ‘stark warning for us all’. She added: ‘The signals are clear. Positivity rates are rising across all age groups and we’re continuing to see spikes in rates of admission to hospital and critical care. We must all follow the new measures that have been bought in to help control the virus and download the new NHS Covid-19 App which is the fastest way of knowing when you’re at risk.’

Infections were squashed below 1,000 from late June until early August following the draconian lockdown in spring, but Covid-19 cases have been on the rise ever since due to fraying adherence to new, and often inconsistent, social distancing rules.  

The death toll now stands at 41,902, and Government figures show fatalities are finally rising in line with cases, which began to spiral earlier this month. On average, 28 Britons are now succumbing to the illness each day, more than double the rate of 13 last week. It had dropped to a low of seven at the start of September.   

Test and Trace figures released today also revealed the number of positive cases has now plateaued, after almost doubling the week before. More than 19,000 infected patients were transferred to the system in the week ending September 16, up just 3 per cent on the 18,770 in the previous seven-day spell — which was up on the 10,491 from the week before that. 

It comes as Rishi Sunak today announced a wave of new measures designed to keep the UK economy afloat over the winter months as the Chancellor pinned his hopes of avoiding massive job losses on a wage subsidy scheme which will replace furlough. Mr Sunak’s new Jobs Support Scheme will see the Government top up the pay of people who can only work part-time in ‘viable jobs’. 

In other coronavirus developments in Britain today:

• A leading epidemiologist said Spain ‘deserves’ to go back into a full national lockdown after easing measures caused a spike in Covid infections, warning that the harsh measures are ‘probably’ the only way to bring the virus back under control;
• MailOnline revealed official figures show the outbreak in London may finally be slowing down, despite warnings of a local lockdown because hospital admissions for coronavirus have tripled in a fortnight and fears there is a ‘rising tide’ of the virus in the capital;
• Boris Johnson faces a potential struggle to get Government lockdown measures past the Commons, as MPs must vote on extending emergency powers put in place to allow ministers to take action to shut down parts or all of England, amid concerns about the scale and scope of new measures unveiled this week;
• The Prime Minister was briefed by the architect behind Sweden’s anti-lockdown strategy before he announced a raft of new restrictions to curb the spread of Covid-19, Downing Street confirmed;
• Boots has suspended bookings for flu jabs amid an ‘unprecedented’ demand for vaccinations this winter. The high-street chemist is now limiting vaccines for the most vulnerable in society, including the over-65s and people with serious underlying health woes;
• MailOnline revealed Carrie Symonds has enjoyed a five-star holiday in a £600-a-night hotel in the exclusive Italian resort of Lake Como with her baby Wilfred, in the week Mr Johnson told Britons the UK was in for another six months of misery.

Britain’s official death toll is much lower than other measures because it only includes victims who have died within 28 days of testing positive. 

The Office for National Statistics and other national number-crunching bodies estimate the total number of victims — both those who died directly of Covid-19 and those who died from the effects of lockdown — could be close to the 60,000 mark.

The official Government data also underestimates total cases. The true number is likely to be upwards of 5million, government advisors say. 

Data on antibodies — substances made by the immune system in response to an infection — is deemed the most accurate way of working out how widespread coronavirus is in the UK.  

This is because hundreds of thousands of infected people were not tested during the height of the crisis, either because of a lack of swabs or because they never had any of the tell-tale symptoms.

Counting how many people who have coronavirus antibodies is, therefore, the most accurate way of calculating how much of the population has already been infected. 

But research has suggested that antibodies decline three months after infection — meaning only a fraction of true cases during the peak of the crisis in March and April may have been spotted. And some people may never develop antibodies at all, so the true number of cases will always be a mystery.

Antibody testing data suggests that no more than 8 per cent of the population — 5.3million out of 66.65million — have developed some form of protection against the disease.   

Testing has been ramped up significantly over the past three months, in order to allow officials to spot areas with major outbreaks.

Bolton, in Greater Manchester, continues to record the highest Covid-19 infection rate in England at 212.8 per 100,000 people, according to an analysis of data by the Press Association. Though it is down slightly from 213.9 the week prior.

South Tyneside, in Tyne and Wear, the North East, has the second highest rate, up from 98.7 to 189.4 with 286 new cases. Hyndburn, Lancashire, North West, is in third place, where the rate has risen from 132 to 183.9.

Speaking to Sky News today, the Health Secretary said almost 10,000 people a day are contracting coronavirus – still fewer than the 100,000 per day estimated during the spring peak.

But today an expert claimed the UK’s coronavirus testing regime may only be picking up a third of cases in the community due to people being asymptomatic – showing no symptoms. 

One expert today claimed the actual number of cases occurring each day in England now may be three times greater than what official figures show. Dr Julian Tang, a respiratory disease expert at the University of Leicester, said the UK’s coronavirus testing regime may only pick up a third of cases in the community due to people being asymptomatic. His estimate would mean the true number of daily infections is around the 18,000 mark.

Dr Tang said findings a large population survey examining the prevalence of coronavirus in England, showed that ‘up to two-thirds (60-70 per cent) of Covid-19 cases may be asymptomatic’. Other studies have revealed it may actually be as low as 20 per cent. Matt Hancock today said around 10,000 people are actually getting infected a day.

Dr Tang suggested there could be up to an additional 12,000 cases not yet being identified because findings from the Real-Time Assessment of Community Transmission (React-1) study. 

The true proportion of Covid-19 carriers who do not show symptoms is not clear, and only this week two published studies estimated it was just 20 per cent of people that were asymptomatic.

Dr Tang also highlighted that the React-2 study of antibody surveillance results up to the end of June indicated there were around 3.4million Covid-19 cases with antibodies to the virus in the community, whereas PCR-based testing showed only around 280,000 cases in the UK. 

Dr Tang said: ‘Hence just based on these React studies alone, there are many more Covid-19 cases in the community, not being tested by PCR acutely, that can be spreading the virus.

‘This is a very worrying trend and it remains to be seen how the BAME (black, Asian, and minority ethnic) populations are going to be affected (though likely in a similar way).

‘So the more people that can comply with the all the restrictions the better we will control the virus.’ 

In the week Britons were given tougher Covid-19 restrictions – which could last up to six months if cases aren’t quelled – its been revealed a traffic light system could be used to trigger local lockdowns.  

Local infection rates will be used to split parts of the country into one of three categories that will determine the restrictions in place in the region under the plan. Users will also be sent messages when lockdown conditions change due to shifts in the infection rate, the Daily Telegraph reported. 

The new plan was approved at a meeting of key cabinet ministers last week and is now waiting for the Prime Minister’s approval.

It could further point out a divide between the north and south of England, which are battling two vastly different outbreaks – although cases are rising everywhere, health chiefs warn. 

The traffic light system would work in tandem with the NHS Test and Trace app, which was finally launched today after four months of being promised. 

The latest NHS Covid-19 app has been trialled on the Isle of Wight and in the London borough of Newham since mid-August, after an initial build was scrapped because it had so many failures. 

Mr Hancock this morning urged Britons to download the software to ‘make the country a safer place’, as he revealed almost 10,000 people a day are contracting Covid. 

But it emerged today the app may wrongly tell up to a third of its users to self-isolate after incorrectly thinking they have come close to an infected person. 

The Department of Health admits the technology still struggles to calculate precise distances, which means some users may be wrongly told to self-isolate even if they have been more than two metres away from an infected person.

Close contact is defined as being within two metres of someone for 15 minutes, but in early trials of the app some people have received alerts when they were four metres away.

The risk of false positives stems from the app’s reliance on Bluetooth signals, which can be affected by nearby objects.  

This issue raises the risk of people deleting the app because they think it is not working properly, or simply deciding not to download it.

Those who receive false positives may also try to access testing centres, leading to more pressure on the already struggling service, or they could ignore the direction to self-isolate.

Officials say the app’s accuracy matches that of other countries, and downplayed hopes for the contact tracing function. They said its main benefit will be to encourage people to abide by social distancing and hygiene rules, The Times reported.  

It also emerged today that the app cannot be accessed on the iPhone 6 or older models, with an error message saying it required iOS 13.5 or later. 

This Apple operating system can only be downloaded on the iPhone 6S and newer models – excluding any handsets that are more than five years old and possibly affecting the older generations more than the young. 

It comes as London is thought to be on the brink of a localised lockdown.

But official figures show the outbreak may finally be slowing down, despite hospital admissions for coronavirus having tripled in a fortnight and public health chiefs warning of a ‘rising tide’ of the virus in the capital. 

During a behind-closed-doors briefing this week, Kevin Fenton, director of Public Health England in the capital, told London mayor Sadiq Khan and the leaders of all 32 boroughs that all signs indicated the disease was making a rapid resurgence in the city.

Ministers are now said to be mulling a decision to place more than 9million people in the city under even tighter restrictions, if the new suite of national social distancing measures announced by the Government this week fail to curb climbing numbers. 

Infections across the city has more than doubled since August, with the seven-day weekly average number of cases rising from 86 per 100,000 to 262 per 100,000, government data shows. 

But official figures show that upticks in cases have ground to a halt across the capital, with only a handful of boroughs now seeing a sustained rise in infections — including Redbridge and Barking and Dagenham, two of the three worst-hit parts of the capital. 

It’s true that Covid-19 hospital admissions in the capital have tripled in a fortnight, with the rolling average rising from 11 on September 2 to 33.4 by September 18. 

But the number of hospitalisations in the city is still a far cry from the 700-plus at the height of the pandemic in spring and only slightly higher than they were the start of July (around 25), when the country was deemed safe to reopen again. 

For comparison, 13 times as many admissions were being recorded in March (425 on March 22) — before the national lockdown was imposed.

And the most up-to-date statistics released by Public Health England, which cover the week ending September 18, reveal that just a single borough in the capital — Redbridge — ranks among the top 40 worst-hit regions of the country. The Government will publish its latest batch of figures on infections tomorrow.

However, Professor Fenton argued testing infrastructure had been stripped out of the capital and reallocated to hotspots in the north, meaning many Londoners may have gone undiagnosed. 

But the latest Department of Health figures show testing in London’s Covid-19 hotspots has actually increased week-on-week.

Analysis of the statistics by MailOnline found Barking carried out 2,669 swabs in the week ending September 16, 25 per cent more than the week before, when 2,036 swabs were done. 

In Redbridge, 3,370 residents were checked for the virus in the latest reporting period, compared to 3,046 the week prior, a rise of nearly 10 per cent.