Death toll tops 40,000 ...‘a sorrow for us all’
CORONAVIRUS deaths passed another grim milestone as a further 357 took Britain’s total to 40,261.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock told yesterday’s Downing Street briefing that going over 40,000 Covid-19 deaths was “a time of sorrow for us all”.
Meanwhile, figures suggest the number of daily new infections was about 5,600 at the end of May, compared with a previous estimate of 8,000.
However, there are fears that the crucial R rate [of infection] may be rising in parts of England.
Mr Hancock said the death toll made him “redouble my determination to deal with this virus and to get that incidence right down – and the way you get the incidence down is to keep the R below one.”
The latest estimate of the average virus reproduction rate found it remained between 0.7 and 0.9 for the UK, but could be higher in some regions of England.
Separate analysis from Public Health England (PHE) and Cambridge University suggested it was at or above one in the Northwest and South-west.
To control the epidemic the crucial figure, representing the average number of people each sufferer infects, must stay below one.
Mr Hancock insisted the advice from emergency scientific advisory group Sage was that it was below one overall.
But he said: “We want increasingly to have an approach of tackling local lockdowns where we spot a flare-up.
“We’ve been doing this over the last few weeks. There was a flare-up in Weston-super-Mare which we successfully got under control.” There is a time lag in the calculations – the latest R value reflects what was happening two to three weeks ago.
PHE medical director Dr Yvonne Doyle said: “Our estimates show that the regional R numbers have increased although they remain below one for most of England.
“This is to be expected as we gradually move out of lockdown.”
An Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey suggests infections outside England’s hospitals and care homes are falling.
An estimated 39,000 new infections were happening in the community each week between April 26 and May 30, down from a previous estimate of 54,000.
The average number of people infected at any time has also more than halved, from an estimated 133,000 from May 11-24 to 53,000 from May 17-30. Infectious diseases expert Professor Keith Neal of Nottingham University said: “The contact tracing service has more than enough staff to cope.
“The main problem is people not getting tested for Covid-19 when they have symptoms.”
ONS analysis of non-coronavirus excess deaths found people with dementia were worst affected.
The largest rises against the fiveyear average were seen in deaths due to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and “symptoms, signs and ill-defined conditions” mostly related to age and frailty.
Fiona Carragher, of Alzheimer’s Society, said grieving families needed answers.
She said: “We already knew people with dementia have been worst hit, accounting for a quarter of all the deaths we’ve seen. But this 52 per cent increase in excess deaths of people with dementia during the pandemic is staggering.
“It is the largest surge in deaths of any health condition. We must understand what’s going on here.”
Ms Carragher said isolation and depression in care homes could explain some of the deaths.
The ONS said undiagnosed coronavirus may also be behind some excess deaths because the virus symptoms might be difficult to distinguish in people with advanced dementia and Alzheimer’s.