BRITAIN NOT SEEING A DOWNWARD TREND IN CORONAVIRUS CASES
The UK is behind most of Europe in bringing the coronavirus pandemic under control, the head of the EU’S disease control agency has said. Andrea Ammon said Britain was one of five European countries along with Poland, Romania, Sweden and Bulgaria which have yet to see a downward trend in cases. Ammon, the head of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), said Britain had seen ‘no substantial changes’ in the last 14 days.
Her comments contradict Boris Johnson’s claim last week that Britain is on a ‘downward slope’.
Germany, which has a larger population and might expect to confirm more cases because of its higher testing numbers, has not seen that many cases since April 11.
In Italy, where the population is only slightly smaller than in Britain, the daily increase has not been as high as 3,985 since April 12.
Germany has seen fewer than 1,000 cases per day for the last four days, while Italy has been below 2,000 per day for most of the last week.
Spain was regularly recording 4,000 cases a day until April 25, although its figures were affected by a short-lived experiment with including antibody tests.
Britain’s average over the last week is 4,776 cases per day - far higher than in Germany (1,074), Italy (1,789) or Spain (1,220).
The UK’S average increase in the last seven days was 2.8 per cent, compared to 0.7 per cent in Germany, 0.9 per cent in Italy and 0.6 per cent in Spain.
The figure is 2.6 per cent in lockdown-free Sweden, another of the countries identified by Ammon as struggling to bring its numbers down.
Neither Germany nor Italy has had an increase above two per cent since April 18, and Germany has now seen fewer than 1,000 new cases for four consecutive days.
The UK has also seen 28,675 coronavirus deaths, and yesterday’s increase of 229 was the smallest since March 29.
However, Britain is now only a few hundred deaths short of Italy’s tally, which is the worst in Europe and the second-highest in
the world after the United States.
The UK’S average 2.4 per cent daily rise in deaths over the last week compares to 2.1 per cent in Germany, 1.1 per cent in Italy and 1.1 per cent in Spain - but 2.9 per cent in Sweden. Speaking to EU lawmakers, Ammon said the UK had seen ‘no substantial changes’ in the last two weeks. (DAILY MAIL),
5 MAY 2020