Are Covid cases beginning to creep back UP?

Britain’s daily Covid cases may be starting to slowly creep up again, official statistics suggested today after health chiefs recorded another 14,718 infections.

Department of Health figures show daily cases plummeted in size over the fortnight that started November 10 as England’s national lockdown thwarted the outbreak. But the UK’s curve began to flatten roughly a week before the draconian restrictions were lifted, suggesting Britons grew tired of the policies before they were forced into the toughened three-tier scheme. 

For comparison, 12,330 Brits were added to the Government’s positive tally last Monday — meaning today’s figure is a 19.4 per cent rise week-on-week.

Deaths are still continuing to fall, however, as a result of the national lockdown. Another 189 victims were posted today, down 8 per cent on the 205 registered last Monday. Fatalities can lag weeks behind cases because it can take infected patients a fortnight to fall severely ill and succumb to the illness. 

The cases come ahead of ‘V-Day’ tomorrow, with Britain set to embark on its biggest vaccination drive in history. Fifty hospitals are geared up to administer Pfizer/BioNTech’s jab to vulnerable over-80s, care home staff and NHS workers.   

But top scientists have warned that Britain faces a third wave if the nation takes its ‘foot off the pedal’ because of the vaccine roll-out. Concerns of a spike in cases before Christmas were raised over the weekend, after pictures showed massive crowds across the country, including outside Harrods in London.

Professor Andrew Hayward, an epidemiologist at University College London and member of No10’s advisory panel SAGE, called on Britons to stick to the rules to avoid a ‘severe peak’ in the New Year.

In other coronavirus developments today: 

• Mass coronavirus testing in Slovakia slashed infection rates by 60 per cent in a week during a national lockdown, according to a study — but experts have warned Britain’s Operation Moonshot scheme may not work as well due to the swabs being less accurate;
• Health Secretary Matt Hancock claimed ‘all parts of the UK’ now have doses of Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid jab ahead of V-Day tomorrow — but three NHS trusts in Tier Three zones, including in Leicestershire and Kent, will no longer get the vaccine this week;
• Boris Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccination ID card could create a black market in fakes if pubs, theatres and restaurants demand to see them and would threaten the civil liberties of millions if imposed as a ‘freedom pass’, dissenting Tory MPs warned;
• Lockdown is finally looming in Sweden with coronavirus infection rates now more than double that of Britain, Germany or Spain and its death rate once again the highest among Nordic nations.

Despite the Government’s official measure of cases continuing to flatline, other mass surveillance studies have suggested the outbreak is shrinking.

The Office for National Statistics, which has tracked the size of England’s outbreak through tens of thousands of random swab tests, last week revealed daily cases more than halved during November, from 47,700 per day at the start of lockdown to 25,700 in the week ending November 28. 

King’s College London researchers, who run a symptom-tracking app, say that cases have been consistently falling since the country’s second national lockdown was enforced on November 5.

And SAGE last week dropped the estimated R rate — the number of people each infected patient passes the virus on to — to 0.8-1, meaning the outbreak is definitely shrinking. It was below the crucial threshold in every region, the advisers said.

Only nine out of 149 local authorities saw their Covid-19 infection rates tick upwards last week, according to Public Health England, in yet another sign that the second wave of the pandemic is shrinking.