The number of Covid-19 cases in England increased by almost a quarter by Christmas, new figures show further emphasizing the impact of social mixing during the festive season.
According to the latest Test and Trace data, a total of 311 372 people tested positive for the virus between 24 and 30 December – an increase of 24 percent compared to the previous week, and the highest total since the program was launched in May .
The Department of Health and Social Care said the UK’s weekly caseload had increased over the past month, partly due to the new, highly contagious variant of the coronavirus first detected in Kent.
The latest increase comes despite a significant decrease in the number of tests done in the seven days to 30 December. More than 1.8 million people were tested – a 29 percent drop from the previous week.
Although the government scrapped plans to relax Covid rules during Christmas for London and much of south-east England, social calls were allowed in 25 other countries – in levels one to three – on 25 December.
Scientists have warned that the full impact of this domestic mix is yet to be fully felt, and cases, hospitalizations and deaths are expected to continue until the end of January.
The new data on testing and detection also showed that 84.9 per cent of the 269,886 people transferred to the system were reached in the week to 30 December and were asked to provide details on recent close contacts.
This is lower than 86.4 percent in the previous week and is the lowest percentage since the week to October 28th.
About 13.9 percent of the people transferred to Test and Trace in the week to December 30 were not reached, while a further 1.3 percent did not provide any communication details.
Test and Trace, meanwhile, successfully reached 92.3 percent of the 493,573 people identified as having close contact with positive cases – a similar ratio to the previous week.
Only 33.0 per cent of people tested at Covid-19 in England during the week on a local site, local site or mobile testing unit – a so-called ‘personal test’ – received their results within 24 hours.
This is an increase of 16.9 percent in the previous week, but is lower than the recent high of 64.9 percent in the week to December 2nd.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised that the results of all personal tests would be by June 24 by the end of June 2020.
He told the Volksraad on June 3 that he “must turn over all tests within 24 hours by the end of June, except problems with post tests or such unsolvable problems”.
Separate data showed that the UK has more new Covid-19 cases per capita than any other major country in the world.
The number of new daily cases of coronavirus went above 60,000 for the first time this week, which equates to more than 800 people in every million. This is almost four times the per capita rate of Italy, Spain and France.