The number of daily infections

[Sundiamond]

So, after much research (it seems buried?) I saw that yesterday 1441 tested positive for Covid.

This seems really high. Is it?

ARe we on course for a big spike sometime soon?

It's been rising for weeks now.

It's rising but that may be the result of much more testing in the hot spots which are subject to extra restrictions, picking up many more asymptotic cases, so it's not a sign yet that things are out of control

Hospital admissions remain low or falling

the national number is not the most important thing anymore - there are loads of very wide regional variations. In some parts of the country the virus has virtually disappeared.

I read that apparently the cases are mostly between 16-45 age bracket where symptoms are milder. I think hospital admissions are still lowish though? Please someone correct me if I'm wrong!

Is it about that every day? Wales is on about 15 new cases a day.

It is concerning, but it’s hard to know how to interpret the figures. The cases could be rising because they are just generally testing more (which is good), it could be because they are doing more targeted testing eg of workplaces where there are outbreaks, where they are picking up asymptomatic cases which wouldn’t normally be discovered (which is also good) or this could be the beginning of a big rise in cases which could be hard to control (which is really worrying).

I think hospital admissions are low because vulnerable people are still being ultra careful so the virus is largely circulating in young people who are mostly getting low or mild symptoms. However care homes showed that it is almost impossible to separate the vulnerable off from the rest of the population so I do worry that eventually the virus will once again impact those who are likely to be hospitalised.

The increase is to do with targeted testing, the 300 cases on one food factory doesn't mean the rest of us are at any higher risk. It's way too simplistic to draw any conclusions from the number alone, take out the hot spot and there aren't many left

The ONS is a good source for data if you're interested in the statistics rather than knee-jerk conclusions.

Out of 66 million people? No that does not seem high.

I think they’re really targeting testing now in those hotspots and testing people across the country at random to try and get a more realistic picture. Despite this I did panic a bit when I saw it was nearly 1500. That’s today’s cases. Yesterday was 1100.
Have you used the map on the governments website? You can put in a postcode and see what’s going on where you live

A very clever mumsnetter (not me!) has set up a website you can sign up to for free and get daily numbers for your local area emailed to you. Great idea!
Covidmessenger.com

I don’t think we are testing nearly enough though. I was just reading that in the U.K. we currently have 1.1 death per 100,000 people and 17.1 (I think) infections per 100,000 people. The death figure is higher than that in both France and the Netherlands but the infection figure is much lower than theirs. You would expect to have at least 100 times as many infections as deaths. You could argue there’s a three week time lag in the infection numbers impacting death numbers but both have been reasonably flat for a while so if you were picking up an adequate number of infections you should have much closer to that 1:100 ratio. All of which suggests there’s a lot of hidden infection.

• I meant to write our death figure is higher than the death figure for France or the Netherlands.