Really silly question but I just do t understand!

[BanditoShipman]

Apologies for the silly question, I’m sure the answer is obvious I just don’t know what it is!

The last few days it has said the Uk has had the following new infections: 763, 846, 880. But the ONS data says we’ve having 4,900 cases a day. Why are these numbers so different??

Similar question, deaths today show as 9 in England and 4 in Wales, but the total deaths for today are 120?

If someone could explain I’d really appreciate it

I would like to understand this too. You're not alone OP

I think the higher numbers are a rolling seven days.

I think the higher numbers are a rolling seven days. in which case it would have been described as 4,900 per week (or per rolling 7 day period).

The 9 deaths are deaths reported by the NHS. The 120 deaths are deaths reported by ONS in all settings. Worth noting that these are not deaths that happened today - the majority are historic deaths that happened days and weeks ago and have only been newly recorded today.

Thank you Waxon, so I think I understand the death difference then: one only hospital settings, two all settings. Also deaths being attributed to random days.

Still don’t understand the 4,900 cases a day bit though..,

Usually the higher number is a statistical estimate of the number of infections, the lower figure is the actual number of positive tests per day afaik.

Obviously not everyone with the virus gets a tests, the estimated number of cases accounts for this.

One is positive tests. The other as I understand it is a modelled number, based on testing samples of the population, that tries to account for the fact that lots of cases are never confirmed with a test...

Does this mean most deaths are happening outside hospital? If it's still lots of care homes, we need to urgently sort out better protection.

Do we have historic deaths everyday? If we do, we might as well ignore that it's historic.

@SheepandCow

Does this mean most deaths are happening outside hospital? If it's still lots of care homes, we need to urgently sort out better protection.

Do we have historic deaths everyday? If we do, we might as well ignore that it's historic.

Yes, we've had historic deaths everyday since the start (obviously not on day one)

We get the number of hospital deaths for the day before then they add on all the other deaths that they've found out about that could have happened at any time since March.

The very knowledgeable posters on the statistics threads know where to find all this information, it's an excellent place if you're interested in the data

The cases is because they do a random sample of the population and test them, so it also shows asymptomatic cases and people who have symptoms other than the testable ones. They then scale this up to give a figure for the population.

Death rate is being investigated as there were issues with who was being included. That is why there are 2 figures, the lower one is hospital the higher one includes community but may be over counting.

@BanditoShipman no such thing as a silly question when it comes to C19.

The published "daily" cases are an amalgam of cases from previous days and do not in any way shape or form relate to the number of confirmed cases that will over the next few days be confirmed as having a specimen date of 30th July. So in today's figures for England 58 relate to 30th July, 462 relate to 29th; and so on.

The ONS figure is based on their Covid-19 infection survey more detail at www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/latest

As for deaths I've lost all sense of how they are now counted.

Thank you all, really helpful responses