U.K. Coronavirus Infections Near Record High – But Deaths Remain Below Average
Coronavirus infections have climbed by a million in a week in the U.K., data from the Office for National Statistics suggest. BBC News has more.
Swab tests suggest about one in every 16 people is infected, as the contagious Omicron variant BA.2 continues to spread. That’s just under 4.3 million people, up from 3.3 million the week before. The figures for the week ending March 19th, are thought to give the most accurate reflection of what’s happening with the virus in the community.
Rates were up in England and Wales, and Scotland reached a new high. Infections have started decreasing in Northern Ireland, however. The rates across the nations were:
• England: 6.4%, up from 4.9% last week – approximately one in 16 people
• Wales: 6.4%, up from 4.1% last week – approximately one in 16 people
• Northern Ireland: 5.9%, down from 7.1% last week – approximately one in 17 people
• Scotland: 9%, up from 7.15% last week – approximately one in 11 peopleA high number of infections means the U.K. can expect Covid hospitalisations to rise too, although vaccines are still helping to stop many severe cases, say experts.
According to the latest figures, there were 16,975 patients in hospital with the virus on March 23rd. About half will have been admitted for something else, rather than Covid, but tested positive.
In the week since March 19th, however, new daily infections appear to be slowing towards a new peak.
Most importantly, deaths have been below average throughout the winter, owing primarily to the mild Omicron Covid variant and the absence of flu.
Covid deaths have increased a bit since March 11th so we may see deaths above average in the next few weeks, though only moderately.
The fact that virus prevalence is currently close to record levels but there are no calls to reverse the opening up of society or U-turn on the ‘living with Covid’ strategy shows how much things have changed. The sky-high prevalence levels are also signs of how completely the vaccines have failed to prevent infection or spread – though they may still be offering some protection against serious disease in the elderly and vulnerable.
The big worry now is that the current prevailing calm is a product only of the mildness of Omicron, and that should a new, more virulent variant emerge then we will be plunged once again into fear, panic and restrictions. How the world would respond to the return of a virus that produces significant waves of excess deaths – and if one does emerge it will likely be even more evasive of the vaccines – is currently the big unknown. Let’s hope that instead, SARS-CoV-2 now goes the way of other pandemic pathogens, blending into the background, and we never have to find out, as frankly, I wouldn’t be hopeful of good sense prevailing.
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I thought we were supposed to be rolling back mass testing??
Unforunately, Johnson caved in to demands the saddle the taxpayer somewhat longer with generation of useless Positive test case! statistics, namely, until Thursday next week. Hence, we should expect hysterics near total freak out level until then, in the hope that changing tack to get back onto the WHO-preferred course of neverending pandemic might still be accomplished.
A never-ending pandemic for the jabbed, natural immunity (for life) for the sensible?
It’s not for life. Omicron has drifted to a sufficient degree that I got the first serious cold since the long COVID one which consumed all of summer 2020 subsided. But that’s sort-of besides the point: A pandemic is a certain, bureaucratic/ administrative state the WHO gets to declare which has consequences for people living in states whose governments listen to the WHO. After a couple of failed attempts, the Johnson-government finally stopped doing so in December 2021 when we were not again put into lockdown. But Johnson being Johnson, he didn’t really commit to that, it’s all temporary and conditional on no dangerous new variants, something the WHO also gets to declare, appearing. It’s not about health or a virus (much as I hate using this phrase), it’s about exercising power over people, IOW, control. At the bottom of this is still the mad Chinese politician who wants to eradicate Sars-CoV2 by treating it as form of antisocial behaviour his public order lapdogs can tackle in the usual way. This can only succeed if it’s done globally. Otherwise, Xi will have to admit that he tried to control the tides by barking orders despite he should have known better.… Read more »
Xi is quite happy to isolate China from the rest of the world. They were embarked on that course already before 2020, so it’s going absolutely fine, as far as he’s concerned. As long as the Chinese population put up with the indignities and the abuse, he’s golden.
The ‘Chinese population’ is growing immensely near me ( Trafford, Gtr Manchester). When they look worried, I ‘might’ start to panic
“This can only succeed if it’s done globally.”
Well, not really. And all animals would equally need to hermetically adhere to NPIs and inoculations. I’m longing to see a Guardian article chiding the lack of Tory zeal for animal contact tracing.
No, s ‘ never ending pandemic’ for the insanely stupid….
Sadly no, it’s a coronavirus so like the common cold you will keep catching it, though hopefully milder strains.
Though perhaps when people drop their covvie obsession and start calling anything that looks like a cold exactly that, Covid will indeed disappear and we will have reached the nirvana of zero covid and herd immunity – natural or otherwise.
I fear you’re probably right.
Why do you still not recognize this pattern, Mr Jones? As soon as real numbers no longer show what Corona’s witnesses want, they switch to ONS estimates. As of today, there were 599,244 recorded positive test results in the last week, down 12,840 from yesterday.
Vaccines working well, 4th clot shot anybody?
Spring booster
Followed by early summer booster.
The mRNA therapies certainly are boosting the number of ‘cases’.
No thanks
Can one get a 4th shot without having had the first three? Not that I’m particularly interested purely an academic question you understand.
On eBay I think.
considering the first 3 don’t seem to do anything positive – they talk now of them having negative effects – why on earth would anyone want a fourth of something that doesn’t do what it says on the tin
Zoe infections hit new peak
but R heading to 1
peak just a few days away
It’s frankly misleading to call asymptomatic positive tests “infections”.
Especially when the tests have been shown to come up positive for 52 different viruses now and counting…….
How does Zoe differentiate between covid and a cold?
The usual tests.
Zoe is quite useful in that they publish (when they feel like it) data on non-covid colds vs covid
But, isn’t it all based on self-reporting? In which case, it’s as reassuring as all those polls that caused Mrs May to call a snap election.
The only difference between a Cold and CoviCold being a PCR Test.
Perhaps we should call it, Testuenza or Testid.
Nope
And that’s why they had to lose their funding. Sorry chaps, but the data just didn’t fit with the narrative any more.
The data never did
calm down Steve
The seem to be inversely proportional to the amount of government funding received. Or is that just coincidence?
Off topic but vitally important!
Petition: Do not restrict our right to freedom of expression online.
We believe the Government’s draft Online Safety Bill poses one of the greatest threats to free speech of any law in the UK in living memory. We are calling on the Government to remove provisions within the Bill which specifically target lawful expression.
Please share!
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/601932
I just signed and would encourage all readers here to do the same. It is vital that free speech is not in any way curtailed by this Machiavellian Bill.
unfortunately as is being seen in uk, us, austrailia and canada among others is a push for a universal ID for the Internet, and has also been seen with the canada protests, if its virtual the state can switch you off and monitor you even more than now. I can also see one day when say go to a job interview, you would need to disclose Internet history etc.
a bill in the US is being introduced wanting internet ID among others
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/kids-online-safety-act-heavy-handed-plan-force-platforms-spy-young-people
Is it a zillion times easier to isolate this virus than to isolate the common cold/flu/coronavirus’ ? My understanding is that they never did.
Sure they isolated it right at the beginning, which was part of the evidence for there being a novel virus around.
What people argue about is that whatever isolation is done is said never to be pure enough… a classic “No true Scotsman” argument.
Sure they isolated it right at the beginning, which was part of the evidence for there being a novel virus around.
No, all claims for the isolation of Sars-Cov-2 are totally bogus.
The same applies for the Covid thingy.
Once the free testing stops, the numbers will drop. Unless of course the worried well have stockpiled tests?
I’ve never been tested and so have never been ill- well, not with the coof anyhow. Ditto the rest of my family.
Funny how the only people I know who claim they “have covid” are those who keep on testing themselves; but oddly enough, most have no symptoms.
I have friends who are swapping tips on where they can get the free tests.
I popped in the question, “Who would oay for a covid jab?” No one, it seems.
Of course, the truth is that they’re not “free”, nor are the gene therapies, and, like it or not, everyone will be paying for years to come. It’s a transfer of money from the taxpayer to Pfizer and a lot of others besides, and nothing philanthropic or free about it. A pity too few can detect the cutpurses already robbing them.
One of my colleagues didn’t leave home for several weeks recently due to ‘testing positive’, despite having no symptoms at all. It’s beyond ridiculous…
Never been tested and so I have never had Covid.
I’ll hold up my hand and say I’ve got it.
I developed a sore throat and headache a week ago – both now gone, but left with a streaming cold.
It’s taken me 2 years to catch it. Unjabbed.
(Unless the cough I had in March 2020 was the original virus)
It was just curiosity to see if this was finally IT, and sure enough 2 lines appeared sharpish. Definitely did not report it to Big Brother – don’t understand why others do.
Looking forward to the antibodies.
I totally get the curiousity. If there were a test that told me what variety my cold was even before all this pandemic bullshit, I’d have done it as I’m v curious about viruses generally. I have lots of books on them.
As long as it were less than a fiver as I’m also stingy.
Not to mention lots of books covered in them.
And soon after, the Chancellor could say that the cure is free – the less they spend, the fewer “cases” there are!
And isn’t it strange that a positive test (with otherwise not a single sign of illness) still elicits the hushed voice utterance of “I’ve got covid, AGAIN. This is the second (third/fouth/fifth) time I’ve had it.” I wonder how many people have had weeks and weeks off work since the advent of testing, but have never had so much as a sniffle? Does it really not occur to them that if they had covid they would feel ill, or at least not 100% well.
I also find it strangely coincidental that they are pushing vaccines again now that ‘covid cases are rising’. I live in a small village, and according to local health info nearly everyone has got covid – very odd, as I don’t know a single person with it!
Judging by the number of masks on view today, people still haven’t got the idea about infections vs hospitalisation. I wonder what the numbers looked like when we had the common cold, if we’d publicised them every day..?
PS> I had a car pull up next to me at the supermarket. A young woman, on her own, but driving in a mask, and thoroughly sanitising her hands before getting out of her car to go in. Found her in the entranceway, cleaning a trolley handle furiously before setting off for some milk and a loaf of bread. Its a form of mental illness…
Each major cold variant will be about 50k to 100k cases per day.
Colds of any type will be about 200k-500k cases per day.
All depending on season, age, etc.
And they are all types of coronavirus.
There are 4 coronavirus (and their zillions of mutations) which account for 10% of Colds – been around since God was in short trousers.
And she was just about to pick up items that others would have handled, including the goods-separator thingies on the paypoint travelator belt. Then, no doubt, she sanitised on the way out, only to get home and handle all those items again.
It’s a wonder some folk have any epidermis left.
Yes, but these nitwits think the hand-sanitiser will kill any virus on anything they touch. They are so dumb they don’t realise it is a (poor) substitute for soap and water – and they don’t use it correctly. Also so dumb not to have informed themselves that the virus cannot be caught by fomite transmission (picked up from object), despite the lies to.d to the contrary by Government.
I keep trying to explain that to people. All I get is the blank look in return. It is brainwashing. The government brainwashed them with the “hands face space” bollocks and when you try to explain the uselessness of masks against a virus that spreads by aerosol not droplets – it is more of the same. The blank look.
People in the main, if you give them simple instructions like these are more than content to simply obey rather than think for themselves. It is depressing.
Stop
Testing
There you go, problem solved (except for the highly neurotic or the cult members).
Jane G: “It was just curiosity to see if this was finally IT, and sure enough 2 lines appeared sharpish.”
NeilParkin: “Its a form of mental illness…”
Whatever. Maybe you don’t even bother washing your hands after using the lavatory?
I don’t behave like the young masked woman alone in her car – never use masks or hand sanitiser so not sure what point you’re making other than slinging mud at your own side.
The BBC radio news at 4pm said that half of the covid cases in hospital were admitted for something else.
I’m amazed it’s not more. The stats become more and more meaningless.
It probably IS more – they will be fudging the figures to try to keep the panic going!
It probably is about that.
But more important will be the number of deaths that result from nosocomial infection — it’ll almost certainly be rather high (because the people in hospital are more likely to be vulnerable to covid).
As of Thursaday incidental hospitalisations 55%.
And their immune systems have been hammered by multiple jabs, low serotonin levels due to depressed mood from watching the news on tv and low vitD levels which are at their lowest at this time of year. A triple whammy!!
What am I doing wrong? I still haven’t had the lurgi (ditto my other half) or any tests or vax or worn a mask. Must be the BCG jab that I had 5 decades ago: good stuff they gave us then!
You’ve very likely long since had it. We’re all conditioned to ignore mild colds.
Ditto. Mrs Dee and I both had a mild ‘something or other’ just before the Wu-flu hit the news. Nothing since, she double-jabbed, me not. We wonder whether we would have antibodies almost two years later if it was the menace from the east.
15% of the population will never get it or test positive. The virus never gets beyond their throat. They have genetically superior immune systems.
I caught covid, a few weeks later I was running again. I also now have natural immunity, and that’s how it is going to stay.
Hate to tell you this, but I may have it again. However it’s all bollocks and it’s a mild sore throat and if I weren’t a lazy cow and looking for an excuse for a lie in, I’d be out running with it. It’s that inconsequential.
It could be that your immune system is mounting a response to a mutation in the variant that you formerly had – so rather than you having “it” all over again, you just might be experiencing the mildest of symptoms for a short period of time as your immune system responds. That has happened to me a couple of times and each time I have just taken it easy, some vit C, some vit D and maybe a bit of quercetin if I felt at all concerned and overnight – gone.
Obviously these fools have failed to take their daily booster, hence their infection.
Everyone knows you have to have a daily booster.
Soon to be hourly…
Two unjabbed friends (he’s 66, she’s 69) have just had it. She brushed it off but he needed bed rest. He’s blood group A and circumstantial evidence suggests they’re harder hit than average by COVID.
As I still don’t think I’ve had anything much since Mar. 2020, could someone please just give me the damned vaccine, i.e. Omicron. Being 68, better to get it over now than later.
I now know a whole extended family that’s been infected, despite all being double or triple jabbed. It’s almost as if the vaccines don’t work…
One of them was lamenting that they don’t know why they got it as they all got jabbed.
They have hammered their immune systems.
they have probably got none left
I think they mean natural immunity is helping…
Dry tinder theory, heartless though it sounds, has proven to be entirely accurate. The disease was never a significant risk to anybody other than the severely aged and unwell.
But we knew this two years ago.
We knew it, and not because we had access to some highly guarded, secret data – it was and still is there for all to see. But they didn’t bloody LOOK! And here we are…
If so many people have it how come we don’t know anyone that has, if you walked down your road then every fifth house should have someone with covid in it, in Scotland that would be every third house, where are all these ill people, how believable are these extrapolations?
No dead bodies in the streets, and supermarkets have remained open during the ‘pandemic’ of the past 2 years. Same check-out staff. How peculiar. Why have none of them died? They have hundreds of ‘the infected’ walk past them every day.
The fact is, it’s all a fraud – but there is no-one willing to go round and sort the fraudsters out. It’s that simple.
Yes, I tested positive on Sunday. Had pretty bad cold symptoms for a few days. Stayed indoors to recover, and by lunchtime yesterday all symptoms were gone.
I had a look at the government’s website that shows the area where I live is at the top of the scale for positive test results; which might be why it seems extremely quiet around here. Probably most people are holed up indoors.
Anyway, I’m now ready to take on the world with my assumed natural immunity.
Over the last two years I haven’t had anything worse than a runny nose and occasional sneezing.
Why are you people so unhealthy?
I hadn’t had a cold for years; why are you so unhealthy?
Oops, misread.
No problem.
But I think you need to continue polishing those social skills.
“I hadn’t had a cold for years”
I don’t believe you.
That you took a test reveals you to be a gullible twat.
Copying Howard Hughes and Michael Jackson was never a good idea.
These two sentence have no relation to each other: Unhealthy refers to a somewhat mystical body state which presumably favours or disfavours disease.
Somewhat more realistically rephrased, your first statement becomes During the last two years, I had no contact to a pathogen I was immunically naive to. Essentially, that’s good luck and/or favourable circumstances. Eg, I’ve had a lot of bad flus and some bad colds in the last ten years because in 2011, all the commonly circulating pathogens in the UK were unknown (in their specific variants) to my body, hence, I went through the equivalent of living here for 40 years in a mere ten.
Even moving to a different city in the same country is good enough for a years-long disease rerun.
I think I’ve pointed out before that your English is nowhere near as good as you think it is.
If you think you know what I think, you’re not only trolling but also seriously deluded.
I’ve only ever expressed an opinion on what you think when it comes to your command of the English language.
And you simply don’t have the command of English that you think you do.
As an example, your interpretation of my comment “Why are you people so unhealthy?”
“Eg, I’ve had a lot of bad flus and some bad colds in the last ten years because in 2011, all the commonly circulating pathogens in the UK were unknown (in their specific variants) to my body, hence, I went through the equivalent of living here for 40 years in a mere ten.”
That’s piss poor English.
Genetics.
“Yes, I tested positive on Sunday.” – That’s one more LFT that has to be ordered from China. They like you.
When writing the comment I assumed it was a pretty good bet that mentioning anything to do with ‘positive test’ on this site would solicit the usual Pavlovian / chimpanzee tea-party response. In fact, for good measure, I decided to spell it out twice.
The only surprise is it’s only been two so far.
It’s a cold.
Australia bans social worker from commenting on Covid/vaccines
https://reclaimthenet.org/south-australia-social-worker-receives-gag-order-covid/
By Cindy Harper
Next events
Saturday 26th March 1pm to 3pm
Yellow Boards LONDON
Junction Victoria St/Bressenden Pl
London SW1E 5NA
Stand in the Park Sundays from 10am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens
(Cockpit Path car park free on Sunday)
Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
“According to the latest figures, there were 16,975 patients in hospital with the virus on March 23rd. About half will have been admitted for something else, rather than Covid, but tested positive.”
Ffs when are we going to stop taking a ridiculous “test” that should not be used as a diagnostic tool. Why are still so obsessed by this mild almost non disease? STOP IT JUST PLEASE STOP IT!!!
Watch “cases’ drop like a stone once free tests are stopped.
Had dinner with a friend last weekend who, being a rabid tester, got cold symptoms and a positive test. Sure enough, husband and I got cold symptoms a couple of days later. Hubs says it’s definitely covvie, won’t do a test cuz it’s obvious having been in close contact with this friend. It’s Covvie, innit!! Why does he just not get that I have a cold (through which I battled womanfully) and he has man flu (which had him laid up in bed for 2 days being pathetic)? So over this Covid obsession!
The “big worry now” is the continued obsession with somewhat flawed processes for detecting alleged infections of one thing. Normally, no such tactic is used – e.g. for infections by other coronaviruses. Quite a few “common colds” fall into that category.
To be fair to some, a year or so ago, the leaflet promoting the use of vaccination that I received through the post did not promise that it could prevent infection or the spread of it. Just mitigation of the symptoms if I caught an infection. So nothing’s changed that way. Of course, there has been a lot of almost fraudulent campaigning to do with it.
Maybe an element of sanity is emerging in politics now; let’s hope so.
I never saw such documentation.
So they acknowledged the injection wouldn’t stop infection or transmission yet they fired care home staff that did want to take this warp speed product.
We are governed by criminals.
If I go into hospital for a respiratory infection but they find out I also have an ingrown toenail would they mention that on my death cert, should I succumb while in their tender care?
Two years ago the standard of care for an ingrown townail was a known lethal dose of HCQ, ventilation and a portion of midazolam just to be sure.
Look at that another covid death!
This coof nust be super deadly.
Did this virus (if it exists at all) cause excess mortality or did the government/medical response?
If you expel thousands of elderly from hospital (denying them the care they need) many will die virus or no virus, if you stick thousands of people on ventilators when there is really no need to do so many will die as a result virus or no virus.
Not to mention the midazolam poisoning that Matt Hancock facilitated in the ‘care homes’.
Well said. People are forgetting this I think. I hope any enquiry focuses on this unnecessary loss of 30-40,000 lives above all else.
Vaccines are doing their job beautifully. You can go back all the way to end of last summer and the relative rates have shown negative efficacy in certain ages, and pretty much all groups for most of the winter. The boosters have sent the efficacy plummeting even more then dose 2 did. Without the vaccines we would have a fraction of the ‘cases’ we have now.
Exactly wrong. As you no doubt know.
The reported positive cases are sounding very suspicious to me. With friends, family and the nature of my work I know around 150 people who I know if they have tested positive.
In the months around Christmas 2020 and 2021 there were a lot of positives and around one in fifteen tested positive and matched the reported figures.
In the last two months I know of two cases (a couple living together) out of that 150 people yet the claim is one in sixteen people are currently infected.
I think around 150 people is a large enough number to question the discrepancy between official figures and my experience.
Are there a lot more false positives or are they just blatantly making up figures now?
I know your tiny sample size must lead to your findings being “statistically insignificant” so should be ignored.
The ONS surveillance survey is the best available consistent information on infection levels available.
Consider the “reported cases” and ask why they are now approaching January daily levels, while the number of tests is about half.
It is VERY common in the UK and rising fast.
There is an increase in coronavirus infections every year in March due doubtless to very low levels of vitD and actually not being being outside in sunlight generally for months which has a major effect on our mood and hence immune system via the retina and pituitary increasing serotonin levels. While it is sunny get outside – taking any glasses off if possible as they cut out the beneficial light frequencies. Also dont watch the news at all as this often depresses mood especially these days.
Good advice – no doubt tree will be along soon to refute it and tell everyone to get indoors.
And no doubt if we did not test asymptomatic people, there would be NO pandemic. The crisis is one of testing, not of a virus.