One in 400 infected

[PuzzledObserver]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52662066

That makes me feel a lot better. I mean, even when I go for a walk every day, I doubt I pass near anything like 400 people over the course of a week. Maybe 200 - it in almost every case, well distanceD, and outside.

And on my weekly supermarket trip, I doubt if there were even 100 people in the store during the time I was there. And of course we’re doing our best to stay away from each other, and if you do pass near someone, it’s not for long.

Risk of infection is a function of how close you are to a person and how long you spend there. And I may not even have been in proximity to even one person who has it in the past week.

Reassuring. Wash my hands on getting home (which I do), and sanitise after pushing the shopping trolley.... I think I’m concluding that my chance of catching it is actually quite low.

[ssd]

How do they know that, they haven't tested everyone. It's too random.

[RigaBalsam]

See I worry that so little have had it and we got to 1k deaths a day. Unless this antibody testing shows more have had it. Then its a worry.

[Clemmieandareallybigbunfight]

They've tested enough. We've carried out a terrible act of self harm on our economy and future, time to move on.

[PuzzledObserver]

I’m not sure how many they tested, but it was done by the ONS, and they should know how to find a representative sample.

That’s the number infected over the 2 weeks of the survey, not total who have ever been infected.

The figure is a bit lower than the Imperial College estimate - theirs is currently around 240,000 total, but at the peak was 2.1 million. It has come down a lot as a direct result of the lockdown.

[Keepdistance]

Yes not many unless you are talking about schools and 180+ students and maybe 300 parents and oops >1 infected

[LastTrainEast]

Clemmieandareallybigbunfight it's low because of the lockdown.

[frumpety]

The problem is where are those who are infected ? If they are evenly spread over the whole of the UK , then there is a much lesser risk than if 100 of those 1 in 400 live in your town iyswim ?

[XDownwiththissortofthingX]

I think an estimated 160 -165,000 cases is extremely conservative given we now have over 30,000 deaths. Ok, those deaths have been spread over a near three month long period, and undoubtedly many people will have contracted Covid-19 and recovered over that period, however, given the numbers that the government itself was forecasting with regard to what percentage of the UK population it expected to contract this, 165,000 current cases, at a time when the virus is supposedly still very much in a peak period, seems like a significant under-estimate to me.

[CuppaZa]

OP that one in 400 isn’t necessarily evenly spread throughout the UK. I agree with previous poster that it is highly likely to be an under estimate

[PuzzledObserver]

Remember the time lag - those who died at the peak had been infected 2-6 weeks earlier. Like I said - Imperial College’s estimate was that at the peak of infections, which was about a week after the start of lockdown, then 2.1 million people were symptomatic. 1,000 deaths out of 2.1 million is still bad, but not as bad as 1,000 out of 165,000 or whatever the true number is.

The Imperial College map can give you an estimate for the infection rate in your area: covid.joinzoe.com/data#interactive-map

For my area it says 0.5%, 1 in 200.

[bombaychef]

As others have said, it's patchy across the country. Primary schools near us have over 500 kids. High schools nearly 2000. Factories may have 800 etc