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England, Scotland and Wales declare 33 new Covid-19 deaths

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England, Scotland and Wales today recorded another 33 coronavirus deaths between them in the preliminary toll as Britain’s fatality toll continues to creep up.

Health officials have yet to confirm the final daily figure, which takes into account data from every setting across the UK. The early count for England only includes laboratory-confirmed victims in NHS-ran hospitals.

NHS England today revealed another 30 patients had died after testing positive for Covid-19, including one who was aged just 18 and had an underlying health condition. Scotland and Wales announced two and one fatality, respectively. None were recorded in Northern Ireland.  

Government figures show deaths are finally rising in line with cases, which began to spiral earlier this month. On average, 25 Britons are now succumbing to the illness each day, almost double the rate of 13 last week. It had dropped to a low of seven at the start of September.

The Department of Health will provide a full update on infections and deaths later this afternoon. Yesterday saw another 6,178 infections recorded — showing the outbreak has risen 37 per cent in the space of a week. 

The figure was, technically, the second-highest amount of cases ever recorded in a 24-hour spell in Britain. But it is impossible to compare infections now to numbers recorded during the first wave because only fewer than 20,000 people were being swabbed on the darkest days in March and April, compared to around 230,000 now.   

But one expert today claimed the actual number of cases occurring each day in England now may be three times greater than what official figures show. Dr Julian Tang, a respiratory disease expert at the University of Leicester, said the UK’s coronavirus testing regime may only pick up a third of cases in the community due to people being asymptomatic. His estimate would mean the true number of daily infections is around the 18,000 mark.

Dr Tang said findings a large population survey examining the prevalence of coronavirus in England, showed that ‘up to two-thirds (60-70 per cent) of Covid-19 cases may be asymptomatic’. Other studies have revealed it may actually be as low as 20 per cent. Matt Hancock today said around 10,000 people are actually getting infected a day.

Test and Trace figures released today also revealed the number of positive cases has now plateaued, after almost doubling the week before. More than 19,000 infected patients were transferred to the system in the week ending September 16, up just 3 per cent on the 18,770 in the previous seven-day spell — which was up on the 10,491 from the week before that. 

It comes as Rishi Sunak today announced a wave of new measures designed to keep the UK economy afloat over the winter months as the Chancellor pinned his hopes of avoiding massive job losses on a wage subsidy scheme which will replace furlough. Mr Sunak’s new Jobs Support Scheme will see the Government top up the pay of people who can only work part-time in ‘viable jobs’. 

England, Scotland and Wales today recorded another 33 coronavirus deaths between them in the preliminary toll as Britain's fatality toll

England, Scotland and Wales today recorded another 33 coronavirus deaths between them in the preliminary toll as Britain’s fatality toll

TEST AND TRACE GETS WORSE… AGAIN 

Test and Trace is still getting worse, as official figures today revealed the number of people getting their swab result back in 24 hours has dropped again.

Fewer than one in three people who have an ‘in-person’ Covid-19 test get told they are either negative or positive within 24 hours — meaning the rate has halved in a fortnight. 

And just 1.8 per cent of people in England who take a DIY swab get their results back in the target time, down slightly on last week’s record-low of 1.9 per cent. 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged 100 per cent of people would get their result back within 24 hours by the end of June. But government statistics show it has still yet to hit the target.

Suspected Covid-19 patients who take tests at home, at drive throughs and at pop-up sites now have to wait a record 40 hours, on average, to discover whether or not they are positive.

And one in 20 have to travel 50 miles or further to get checked, despite ministers batting away claims that swathes of Britons were being told to drive hours away to get checked for the life-threatening illness.

Figures also suggest the number of people complying with the NHS Test and Trace system is stalling, with fewer Covid-19 cases giving details of friends and family this week.

It comes as the NHS Covid app was finally launched today, four months after it was first promised. But flaws have already been exposed with claims the Bluetooth-based software will wrongly tell up to a third of its users to self-isolate after incorrectly thinking they have come close to an infected person.

The testing system collapsed when children returned to school, prompting Baroness Dido Harding, No 10’s testing tsar, to confess that demand had outstripped capacity by ‘three or four times’. It has meant possible Covid-19 patients have been asked to drive hundreds of miles to get a swab.

Mr Johnson has promised to raise capacity to 500,000 a day by the end of October but the industry warned yesterday that it is already a ‘few weeks behind’ the Prime Minister’s target due to delays in deliveries. 

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer clashed with Mr Johnson once again in the House of Commons yesterday, after Mr Starmer accused the PM of ‘pretending there isn’t a problem’ with testing.  

In other coronavirus developments in Britain today:

  • A leading epidemiologist said Spain ‘deserves’ to go back into a full national lockdown after easing measures caused a spike in Covid infections, warning that the harsh measures are ‘probably’ the only way to bring the virus back under control;
  • MailOnline revealed official figures show the outbreak in London may finally be slowing down, despite warnings of a local lockdown because hospital admissions for coronavirus have tripled in a fortnight and fears there is a ‘rising tide’ of the virus in the capital;
  • Boris Johnson faces a potential struggle to get Government lockdown measures past the Commons, as MPs must vote on extending emergency powers put in place to allow ministers to take action to shut down parts or all of England, amid concerns about the scale and scope of new measures unveiled this week;
  • The Prime Minister was briefed by the architect behind Sweden’s anti-lockdown strategy before he announced a raft of new restrictions to curb the spread of Covid-19, Downing Street confirmed;
  • Boots has suspended bookings for flu jabs amid an ‘unprecedented’ demand for vaccinations this winter. The high-street chemist is now limiting vaccines for the most vulnerable in society, including the over-65s and people with serious underlying health woes;
  • MailOnline revealed Carrie Symonds has enjoyed a five-star holiday in a £600-a-night hotel in the exclusive Italian resort of Lake Como with her baby Wilfred, in the week Mr Johnson told Britons the UK was in for another six months of misery.

Britain’s overall death toll currently stands at 41,862. This count is much lower than other measures because it only includes victims who have died within 28 days of testing positive. 

The Office for National Statistics and other national number-crunching bodies estimate the total number of victims — both those who died directly of Covid-19 and those who died from the effects of lockdown — could be close to the 60,000 mark.

The official Government data also shows 409,729 cases have now been diagnosed since the pandemic began. But the true number is likely to be upwards of 5million, government advisors say. 

Data on antibodies — substances made by the immune system in response to an infection — is deemed the most accurate way of working out how widespread coronavirus is in the UK.  

This is because hundreds of thousands of infected people were not tested during the height of the crisis, either because of a lack of swabs or because they never had any of the tell-tale symptoms.

Counting how many people who have coronavirus antibodies is, therefore, the most accurate way of calculating how much of the population has already been infected. 

But research has suggested that antibodies decline three months after infection — meaning only a fraction of true cases during the peak of the crisis in March and April may have been spotted. And some people may never develop antibodies at all, so the true number of cases will always be a mystery.

Antibody testing data suggests that no more than 8 per cent of the population — 5.3million out of 66.65million — have developed some form of protection against the disease.   

It now takes an average of 75 hours for a person who takes a home test to get a result back

It now takes an average of 75 hours for a person who takes a home test to get a result back

One in 20 have to travel 50 miles to get checked. Pictured is the average distance travelled for a test for each route

One in 20 have to travel 50 miles to get checked. Pictured is the average distance travelled for a test for each route 

DOES LONDON REALLY NEED A LOCAL LOCKDOWN?

London is thought to be on the brink of a localised lockdown after public health chiefs warned of a 'rising tide' of the virus in the capital. More than 500 people are being diagnosed in London every day, more than double the number in August

London is thought to be on the brink of a localised lockdown after public health chiefs warned of a ‘rising tide’ of the virus in the capital. More than 500 people are being diagnosed in London every day, more than double the number in August

Covid-19 hospital admissions in the capital have tripled in a fortnight, with the seven-day average rising from 11 on September 2 to 33.4 by September 18. But the number of hospitalisations in the city is still a far cry from the 700-plus at the height of the pandemic in spring and only slightly higher than they were the start of July (around 25), when the country was deemed safe to reopen again

Covid-19 hospital admissions in the capital have tripled in a fortnight, with the seven-day average rising from 11 on September 2 to 33.4 by September 18. But the number of hospitalisations in the city is still a far cry from the 700-plus at the height of the pandemic in spring and only slightly higher than they were the start of July (around 25), when the country was deemed safe to reopen again

London is thought to be on the brink of a localised lockdown — but official figures show the outbreak may finally be slowing down, despite hospital admissions for coronavirus having tripled in a fortnight and public health chiefs warning of a ‘rising tide’ of the virus in the capital. 

During a behind-closed-doors briefing this week, Kevin Fenton, director of Public Health England in the capital, told London mayor Sadiq Khan and the leaders of all 32 boroughs that all signs indicated the disease was making a rapid resurgence in the city.

Ministers are now said to be mulling a decision to place more than 9million people in the city under even tighter restrictions, if the new suite of national social distancing measures announced by the Government this week fail to curb climbing numbers. 

Infections across the city has more than doubled since August, with the seven-day weekly average number of cases rising from 86 per 100,000 to 262 per 100,000.  But official figures show that upticks in cases have ground to a halt across the capital, with only a handful of boroughs now seeing a sustained rise in infections — including Redbridge and Barking and Dagenham, two of the three worst-hit parts of the capital. 

It’s true that Covid-19 hospital admissions in the capital have tripled in a fortnight, with the rolling average rising from 11 on September 2 to 33.4 by September 18. But the number of hospitalisations in the city is still a far cry from the 700-plus at the height of the pandemic in spring and only slightly higher than they were the start of July (around 25), when the country was deemed safe to reopen again. For comparison, 13 times as many admissions were being recorded in March (425 on March 22) — before the national lockdown was imposed. 

However, Professor Fenton argued testing infrastructure had been stripped out of the capital and reallocated to hotspots in the north, meaning many Londoners may have gone undiagnosed. But the latest Department of Health figures show testing in London’s Covid-19 hotspots has actually increased week-on-week.

Analysis of the statistics by MailOnline found Barking carried out 2,669 swabs in the week ending September 16, 25 per cent more than the week before, when 2,036 swabs were done. In Redbridge, 3,370 residents were checked for the virus in the latest reporting period, compared to 3,046 the week prior, a rise of nearly 10 per cent.

Testing has been ramped up significantly over the past three months, in order to allow officials to spot areas with major outbreaks.

Bolton, in Greater Manchester, continues to record the highest Covid-19 infection rate in England at 212.8 per 100,000 people, according to an analysis of data by the Press Association. Though it is down slightly from 213.9 the week prior.

South Tyneside, in Tyne and Wear, the North East, has the second highest rate, up from 98.7 to 189.4 with 286 new cases. Hyndburn, Lancashire, North West, is in third place, where the rate has risen from 132 to 183.9.

Speaking to Sky News today, the Health Secretary said almost 10,000 people a day are contracting coronavirus – still fewer than the 100,000 per day estimated during the spring peak.

But today an expert claimed the UK’s coronavirus testing regime may only be picking up a third of cases in the community due to people being asymptomatic – showing no symptoms. 

Dr Tang suggested there could be up to an additional 12,000 cases not yet being identified because findings from the Real-Time Assessment of Community Transmission (React-1) study. 

The true proportion of Covid-19 carriers who do not show symptoms is not clear, and only this week two published studies estimated it was just 20 per cent of people that were asymptomatic.

Dr Tang also highlighted that the React-2 study of antibody surveillance results up to the end of June indicated there were around 3.4million Covid-19 cases with antibodies to the virus in the community, whereas PCR-based testing showed only around 280,000 cases in the UK. 

Dr Tang said: ‘Hence just based on these React studies alone, there are many more Covid-19 cases in the community, not being tested by PCR acutely, that can be spreading the virus.

‘This is a very worrying trend and it remains to be seen how the BAME (black, Asian, and minority ethnic) populations are going to be affected (though likely in a similar way).

‘So the more people that can comply with the all the restrictions the better we will control the virus.’ 

In the week Britons were given tougher Covid-19 restrictions – which could last up to six months if cases aren’t quelled – its been revealed a traffic light system could be used to trigger local lockdowns.  

Local infection rates will be used to split parts of the country into one of three categories that will determine the restrictions in place in the region under the plan. Users will also be sent messages when lockdown conditions change due to shifts in the infection rate, the Daily Telegraph reported. 

The new plan was approved at a meeting of key cabinet ministers last week and is now waiting for the Prime Minister’s approval.

It could further point out a divide between the north and south of England, which are battling two vastly different outbreaks – although cases are rising everywhere, health chiefs warn. 

The traffic light system would work in tandem with the NHS Test and Trace app, which was finally launched today after four months of being promised. 

The latest NHS Covid-19 app has been trialled on the Isle of Wight and in the London borough of Newham since mid-August, after an initial build was scrapped because it had so many failures. 

Mr Hancock this morning urged Britons to download the software to ‘make the country a safer place’, as he revealed almost 10,000 people a day are contracting Covid. 

But it emerged today the app may wrongly tell up to a third of its users to self-isolate after incorrectly thinking they have come close to an infected person. 

The Department of Health admits the technology still struggles to calculate precise distances, which means some users may be wrongly told to self-isolate even if they have been more than two metres away from an infected person.

Close contact is defined as being within two metres of someone for 15 minutes, but in early trials of the app some people have received alerts when they were four metres away.

The risk of false positives stems from the app’s reliance on Bluetooth signals, which can be affected by nearby objects.  

This issue raises the risk of people deleting the app because they think it is not working properly, or simply deciding not to download it.

Those who receive false positives may also try to access testing centres, leading to more pressure on the already struggling service, or they could ignore the direction to self-isolate.

Officials say the app’s accuracy matches that of other countries, and downplayed hopes for the contact tracing function. They said its main benefit will be to encourage people to abide by social distancing and hygiene rules, The Times reported.  

SPAIN ‘DESERVES’ A TOUGHER LOCKDOWN, TOP EXPERT CLAIMS

Spain 'deserves' to go back into a second full lockdown, one of the country's top epidemiologists has said, after easing measures caused Covid cases to spike (pictured)

Spain ‘deserves’ to go back into a second full lockdown, one of the country’s top epidemiologists has said, after easing measures caused Covid cases to spike (pictured)

A leading Spanish epidemiologist has said the country ‘deserves’ to go back into a full national lockdown after easing measures caused a spike in Covid infections.

Juan Martinez, the ex-director of public health for Madrid which is at the heart of the new wave of infections, said the harsh measures are ‘probably’ the only way to bring the virus back under control.

He spoke out after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez ruled out returning to a nationwide lockdown that was put in place in March and succeeded in reducing cases, but crippled the country’s economy.

Mr Sanchez insisted he favours using local lockdowns of the kind covering parts of Madrid and Ibiza, where infections are particularly bad.

Madrid has forbidden citizens in 37 of the city’s boroughs from leaving their houses except in emergencies, and has called in the army to help enforce the rules.

But with infections still increasing, more severe measures are being considered – which could see the entire metropolis placed into full lockdown.

Speaking as officials mull the new measures, Mr Martinez said: ‘We probably need another national lockdown because we haven’t done things properly following the end of the first one. We’ve certainly earned one.

It also emerged today that the app cannot be accessed on the iPhone 6 or older models, with an error message saying it required iOS 13.5 or later. 

This Apple operating system can only be downloaded on the iPhone 6S and newer models – excluding any handsets that are more than five years old and possibly affecting the older generations more than the young. 

It comes as London is thought to be on the brink of a localised lockdown.

But official figures show the outbreak may finally be slowing down, despite hospital admissions for coronavirus having tripled in a fortnight and public health chiefs warning of a ‘rising tide’ of the virus in the capital. 

During a behind-closed-doors briefing this week, Kevin Fenton, director of Public Health England in the capital, told London mayor Sadiq Khan and the leaders of all 32 boroughs that all signs indicated the disease was making a rapid resurgence in the city.

Ministers are now said to be mulling a decision to place more than 9million people in the city under even tighter restrictions, if the new suite of national social distancing measures announced by the Government this week fail to curb climbing numbers. 

Infections across the city has more than doubled since August, with the seven-day weekly average number of cases rising from 86 per 100,000 to 262 per 100,000, government data shows. 

But official figures show that upticks in cases have ground to a halt across the capital, with only a handful of boroughs now seeing a sustained rise in infections — including Redbridge and Barking and Dagenham, two of the three worst-hit parts of the capital. 

It’s true that Covid-19 hospital admissions in the capital have tripled in a fortnight, with the rolling average rising from 11 on September 2 to 33.4 by September 18. 

But the number of hospitalisations in the city is still a far cry from the 700-plus at the height of the pandemic in spring and only slightly higher than they were the start of July (around 25), when the country was deemed safe to reopen again. 

For comparison, 13 times as many admissions were being recorded in March (425 on March 22) — before the national lockdown was imposed.

And the most up-to-date statistics released by Public Health England, which cover the week ending September 18, reveal that just a single borough in the capital — Redbridge — ranks among the top 40 worst-hit regions of the country. The Government will publish its latest batch of figures on infections tomorrow.

However, Professor Fenton argued testing infrastructure had been stripped out of the capital and reallocated to hotspots in the north, meaning many Londoners may have gone undiagnosed. 

But the latest Department of Health figures show testing in London’s Covid-19 hotspots has actually increased week-on-week.

Analysis of the statistics by MailOnline found Barking carried out 2,669 swabs in the week ending September 16, 25 per cent more than the week before, when 2,036 swabs were done. 

In Redbridge, 3,370 residents were checked for the virus in the latest reporting period, compared to 3,046 the week prior, a rise of nearly 10 per cent.

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