UK declares 569 more coronavirus deaths

Another 569 coronavirus deaths have been declared in the UK, taking the total death toll to 2,921.

The increase makes today the worst day so far in the crisis which is crippling Britain. It is the third day in a row that a new one-day high has been recorded.

A further 4,244 people were diagnosed with the infection in the past 24 hours, pushing the total to 33,718. 

This was slightly fewer than the 4,324 new diagnoses yesterday.

The Department of Health statistics mean the UK’s coronavirus death toll has almost quadrupled in six days from just 759 last Friday, March 27.  

And the NHS has announced more victims in four days this week (1,693) than in every other day of the outbreak combined up until Sunday, March 29 (1,228).

A member of the public is lifted into the back of an ambulance by paramedics in Euston, London. The capital remains at the centre of the UK’s COVID-19 epidemic

The number of new daily cases of the coronavirus remained relatively stable through the last five days of March. Not pictured on this graph, however, are the 4,324 new cases declared yesterday and 4,244 today – both record highs

NHS staff were today finally being swabbed for coronavirus at a make-shift facility in Chessington, with queues of cars being waved through by a security guard in hi-vis jacket

The true scale of the outbreak is not shown by the Department of Health’s statistics, which cut off at 5pm the day before they are announced.

Because of this, some of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland’s statistics will be taken into tomorrow’s overall count for the UK. 

Combined, each country’s individual death tolls for the day – England (561), Scotland (66), Wales (19) and Northern Ireland (6) – add up to 652.

This takes the real total to 2,977, and individual numbers of positive tests put the patient count at 39,215.

Scotland was hardest hit overnight and saw its death count more than double from 60 to 126.

Experts have stressed that fast rising numbers of infections and deaths do not mean that the UK’s lockdown isn’t working.

It is expected to take at least a fortnight to see any impact on official statistics because of how long it takes the virus to make people ill and then for them to recover or die.

People dying in intensive care yesterday, for example, are likely to have caught the virus two, three or even more weeks ago – before the Stay Home campaign began. 

If testing rates remain the same, the first thing to drop will be the number of new infections as fewer people become ill in the first place.

After that, the number of people being admitted to hospital will fall, according to cancer doctor Professor Karol Sikora, and then, finally, the number of people dying will come down, too.

The process of catching the infection to dying can take two to three weeks or longer for each patient who succumbs to the illness.

Professor Keith Neal, infectious diseases expert at the University of Nottingham, said: ‘These figures are much in line with expectations. 

‘There is continuing evidence that the social distancing measure put in place on the 16th and then 23rd of March could be having an effect in slowing the rate of increase of new infections. 

‘The current social distancing needs to be maintained and it is also a reminder that not only the old and those with underlying conditions can get severe disease.’

NHS England said its own patients who died were between 22 and 100 years old.

44 of them were otherwise healthy, with the youngest patient with no underlying conditions being just 25. A 100-year-old victim also did not have any other illnesses. 

One factor which could change the UK’s statistics in the coming days and weeks is the pressure the Government is coming under to test more people.

Public Health England, which is managing all COVID-19 testing across around 48 laboratories, tested 7,771 people for the coronavirus yesterday – a total 10,657 tests. 

But critics are calling on authorities to ramp this up significantly and routinely test all NHS staff and then move on to testing the public and not just hospital patients.

Drive-through screening stations have been set up for NHS workers only in London and have so far tested around 2,800 medical staff.

The Government is being slammed for letting Public Health England try to run testing for the whole country in-house and not pulling in resources from private research institutes, university labs or more than 40 hospital labs.

The Francis Crick Institute, one of the country’s leading science labs, in London, has stepped up by beginning testing staff from the local Imperial College London Hospitals NHS Trust.

It said it will be able to manage 500 tests per day by next week and wants to scale up to 2,000 a day for healthcare professionals so they can continue to work.

Its CEO, Sir Paul Nurse, said the Government was ‘running out of time’ to get a grip on the widespread testing that the World Health Organization has urged nations to do.

The WHO says every person suspected to be COVID-19 positive should be tested, and their close contacts should also be tested so the virus’s spread can be monitored.

Sir Paul said on BBC Radio 4 this morning that there were many labs even in the public sector – but outside PHE – that could be used.

Referring to the famous Second World War evacuation of UK forces from the French coast, he said: ‘A metaphor here is Dunkirk, to be honest. We are a lot of little boats and the little boats can be effective. 

‘The government has put some bigger boats – destroyers – in place. 

‘That is a bit more cumbersome to get working and we wish them all the luck to do that. But we little boats can contribute as well.’

Sir Paul said the smaller labs were ‘more agile’ to deal with global shortages of reagents. 

‘We can make pipelines of reagents and chemicals,’ he said.  ‘We can move faster to deal with issues. 

‘Of course we have supply chain problems but we can reduce them by being small and agile.’ 

UK coronavirus cases could number 1.8MILLION as leading scientists predict one in every 37 Brits has caught the killer illness already

The UK could already have had 1.8million coronavirus patients with one in every 37 people having caught the disease, according to scientists. 

In Spain a staggering one in every seven people – 7.5million citizens – are predicted to have had the COVID-19 illness already, along with 10 per cent of Italians.

Researchers at Imperial College London, led by government adviser Professor Neil Ferguson, have studied coronavirus outbreaks across Europe to predict their true scales.

Professor Ferguson has been one of the foremost British experts since the outbreak began and it was his work that persuaded the Government to order a lockdown. 

He and colleagues now suggest that an average of four per cent of people in 11 of the Europe’s wealthiest countries have been infected – some 19million people.

They made the predictions as an alternative to ‘highly unrepresentative’ official figures, which are based largely on tests done in hospitals.

Many millions of people are believed to have caught the virus and recovered at home, putting the infection tolls in the UK, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, France, Austria, Denmark, Germany and Norway considerably higher than the World Health Organization total of 366,000.

Estimates from Imperial College London show 15 per cent of Spain’s population may already have been infected with the coronavirus. Graph shows Imperial College’s estimated infection rates (yellow bar) contrasted with each nations’ current death rates – how many of those officially diagnosed can be expected to die (red bar)

The Imperial College London team based their predictions on how many people have died in each country with COVID-19, and also the lockdown measures each place has put in and when they started them

Professor Ferguson and his colleagues wrote in their report: ‘The ECDC [European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control] provides information on confirmed cases and deaths attributable to COVID-19.

‘However, the case data are highly unrepresentative of the incidence of infections due to underreporting as well as systematic and country-specific changes in testing.

‘We, therefore, use only deaths attributable to COVID-19 in our model; we do not use the ECDC case estimates at all.’

UK’S CORONAVIRUS DEATH TOLL 24% HIGHER WHEN NON-HOSPITAL VICTIMS INCLUDED 

The true death toll of the coronavirus outbreak in the UK could be 24 per cent higher than NHS figures show, according to statistics released today.

Patients who had COVID-19 mentioned on their death certificates numbered 210 in England and Wales up to March 20, the Office for National Statistics revealed.

This was 24 per cent higher than the 170 deaths recorded by NHS England and Public Health Wales during the same time frame. 

If the ratio has stayed true since that time, the true current number of fatalities could be around 1,739 instead of the official 1,408.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has launched a new data series adding in the numbers of people who have died with or after having COVID-19 in the community, including those who died in care homes or their own houses.

Coronavirus was not necessarily the cause of death for every one of the patients, but was believed to have been a factor.  

The data does not include Scotland or Northern Ireland – up to March 20, eight people had died in the those countries (six in Scotland, two in Northern Ireland), suggesting the true figure could have been 10. 

As well as considering how many people have died with the coronavirus in each country, the Imperial team also looked at what types of lockdown measures each country has brought in and when they started them.

The stricter and the sooner they began, the smaller proportion of people are likely to have become infected.

The country with the lowest estimated infections was Norway, where only 0.41 per cent of its 5.5million people are thought to have caught the coronavirus (approximately 22,400 people).

In Germany the rate of infection was thought to be 0.72 per cent (577,000 people), according to the data which was estimated for March 28. 

Besides Spain and Italy, which had a combined estimate of around 13.6million people infected, no other country’s toll was higher than four per cent.

In Belgium it was thought to be 3.7 per cent (433,600 people); in Switzerland 3.2 per cent (269,000); Sweden 3.1 per cent (316,200); France 3 per cent (2.035million); UK 2.7 per cent (1.775m); Austria 1.1 per cent (97,400) and Denmark 1.1 per cent (64,500).

The official number of cases recorded in all 11 countries in the research is just 365,734, by comparison.

Writing in the paper, the team said: ‘We estimate that there have been many more infections than are currently reported.

‘The high level of under-ascertainment of infections that we estimate here is likely due to the focus on testing in hospital settings rather than in the community.

‘Despite this, only a small minority of individuals in each country have been infected…

‘Our estimates imply that the populations in Europe are not close to herd immunity (50-75%).’ 

The paper by Imperial College intended to work out how effective lockdowns and social distancing measures would be at protecting people.

It predicts that the lockdown in Italy – which has the highest death toll of any country in the world – may have saved 38,000 lives.

The study has not been reviewed by other scientists or published in a journal. 

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