Another day, another worrying coronavirus headline.
On Tuesday it was reported the UK’s testing and tracing system was not good enough to prevent a second wave once schools reopen.
It came after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced last week the brakes were being applied on the lifting of further restrictions.
And that was off the back of the announcement that parts of northern England were to have some of the lockdown restrictions reimposed on them.
The problem, ministers and their advisers warned, was that infections were on the rise.
We had, concluded chief medical adviser Prof Chris Whitty, reached the limits of lifting lockdown.
It prompted a weekend of debate, with people urging pubs to close so schools could open.
But is the situation really as bad as it seems?
Infection rates ‘not rising in any significant sense’
It was one of the more curious aspects of last week’s warnings that the government seemed so ready to embrace the concept that infection rates were on the up.
This is a government that all along the way has been trying to mount a vigorous defence of its record.
The surveillance programme – run by the Office for National Statistics – did suggest they were rising.
But there have to be heavy caveats around these findings – they are based on just 24 positive cases among nearly 30,000 people over the course of two weeks. Drawing conclusions from such smaller numbers is fraught with difficulties.
The other key source of data – the cases found by testing – shows numbers have started going up. They are now more than 40% higher than they were in the second week of July on a rolling-seven day average.
Recent Comments