Britain’s Covid cases fell over the weekend in a sign that the current wave may be peaking, but both deaths and hospitalisations continued to rise.
There were 215,001 positive tests recorded from Saturday to Monday marking a five per cent drop on last week’s same tally, Government data showed.
Ministers stopped publishing daily figures on the weekend at the end of last month as part of the living with Covid strategy, and are now considering scrapping the 24-hour updates entirely.
Another 217 Covid deaths were also recorded over the last three days, an uptick of 28 per cent on the same period last week.
Hospitalisations with the virus climbed 15.9 per cent in a week, after another 2,380 were recorded on March 22 —the latest date UK-wide statistics are available for.
There are growing suggestions that infections, which also fell last Friday, could be peaking, four days before free lateral flow and PCR tests are dumped in England. They will remain available in Scotland until May, and in Wales until the end of June.
Experts have repeatedly called on ministers not to end the universal swabbing offer, warning it will leave them in the dark over major outbreaks in parts of the country.
But No10 today insisted it would not backtrack, arguing the country was now in a ‘vastly different’ position to last April when the tests first became available to all.
Cases are nearing an all-time high with one in 16 people in England infected, swabbing by the gold-standard ONS survey suggests. There are no signs it is slowing down.
But the data only covers from two weeks ago and does not include the latest period, when there are the first signs of a possible slowdown in cases.
Covid cases fell across all UK nations over the last three days, UK Health Security Agency data showed, compared to the same period last week.
The sharpest drop was in Northern Ireland (down 28 per cent in a week), followed by Scotland (down 14 per cent), Wales (down 12 per cent) and England (down three per cent).
A total of 632,000 Covid swabs were completed yesterday, barely a change on the same time last week when 650,000 were recorded.
This suggests the drop in cases may not necessarily be down to a fall in the number of tests carried out as England counts down to the end of free tests.
Covid infections have now fallen three times in a week over the past fortnight.
They also dropped last Friday (down 14 per cent), and Tuesday (down 14 per cent).
Covid cases surged at the start of this month after a more infectious version of Omicron became dominant.
Ministers said the lifting of the final Covid rules — with the end of self-isolation — likely led to a surge in cases.
But some experts have suggested the wave may peak by the end of this month as it runs out of people to infect.
Ministers today insisted they would not backtrack on plans to scrap free Covid tests in England despite please from health chiefs.
From Friday lateral flow tests will be rationed to the elderly and vulnerable people as part of the final stage of the Government’s living with Covid strategy.
After then, people will have to pay privately for a test at pharmacies including Boots, for around £2.50 per test.
A spokesman for No10 said: ‘There’s no plans to change our approach.
‘You’ll know the significant cost — billions of pounds we are spending every month providing free testing to the public.
‘And because of vaccines, therapeutics and other means we are now in a vastly different position to where we were when we first started providing free testing.’
SAGE has previously warned ending the scheme, which cost up to £2bn a month, would leave the country in the dark to a fresh wave and said poor people will be hit hardest.
When the Omicron wave was collapsing in February, Boris Johnson announced that free testing would be scrapped from April.
The announcement was widely seen as a way to appease Tory backbenchers who at the time were threatening to hand in letters of no confidence in the PM following the Partygate scandal.
But in recent weeks the UK has seen a resurgence in Covid infections and hospital admissions, driven by the even more infectious BA.2 variant, which has led many experts to call for free tests to stay.
Professor Matt Keeling, an epidemiologist at the University of Warwick and member of SAGE, said on Friday that removing the scheme prevents the public from responding to the risk of infection.
Cases have risen to nearly the highest ever rate, with an estimated one in 16 people in England carrying Covid last week.
Hospitalisations have reached record levels in Scotland and are rising rapidly in England too.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show 3.5million people were infected on any given day in the week up to March 19, or the equivalent of one in 16 people in England. This is the latest data available
Data from the ZOE study, which is based on swabs of more than 60,000 people and reports from 840,000 weekly contributors, last week suggested there are 324,954 new symptomatic infections across the UK per day. The figure, which is the highest ever recorded by the study, suggests one in 19 people across the four nations currently have symptomatic Covid
But around half of virus hospitalisations and a third of fatalities are thought to be incidental, official figures suggest.
Mr Johnson’s spokesperson suggested that vaccines and therapeutics have changed the threat of the virus.
‘So there’s no plans to change our approach,’ they added.
From Friday, only health and social care staff and a small number of at-risk groups will still be able to access the tests for free if they have symptoms.
Official figures show 92 per cent of Britons aged 12 and over have had at least one Covid jab, while more than two-thirds are boosted.
And the UK has secured more than 5million courses of antiviral drugs which cut the risk of being hospitalised or dying from the virus by up to 90 per cent among the most vulnerable.
From Friday, members of the public will be expected to pay around £2.50 at pharmacies per lateral flow test as part of the Government’s plan to live with the virus.
Testing is the last remaining Covid pillar still left in England after mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing, self-isolation and other laws were dropped on February 24.
But experts have called on the Government to halt plans to ditch the tests amid rising cases.
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