@Firefliess I think the daily reported cases have always been a fraction of the real number.
Extrapolating back, if we have been having well over 1000 deaths per day, we probably had 1-200k cases per day 3 or 4 weeks earlier.
Unfortunately, we don't, for understandable reasons, have very good survey data for the period from 18 Dec- 4th Jan.
However, while cases are certainly coming down, they are coming down from a high peak.
Bear in mind that the ONS data is for the week ending 30 Jan, so we are looking at what was happening 1or 2 weeks ago, also.