#12948406, By glo Coronavirus

glo 6 Aug 2021 14:32:30 3,797 posts
Seen 5 hours ago
Registered 19 years ago

Rogueywon wrote:
The ONS Covid survey results out this morning are good news. The survey has a degree of lag built into it - so the results are for the week up to 31 July - but they do show that the infection rate dropped then. The rate is still very high - 1-in-75, down from 1-in-65, but it's still confirmation that the fall in the case-rate back from that mid-July spike wasn't an illusion caused by people not getting tested (or the wrong people getting tested).

The methodology the ONS survey uses means it isn't affected by national trends in who's getting tested.

It is good news but 1 in 75 still represents extremely high infection levels and doesn't account for the much larger drop in case numbers we saw in late July. I would agree that the fall in infections wasn't a complete illusion but I do think it was exaggerated due to people not getting tested or the wrong people getting tested.

Also the demographic of those catching the virus would probably mean a higher number of asymptomatic cases that don't end up appearing in the case numbers. Would be interesting to know how many asymptomatic cases were found in the ONS infection survey