Coronavirus spreading at similar rate across uk

CORONAVIRUS is being spread at almost the same rate in nearly every part of the UK, the latest estimates of the virus’ R number have suggested.

New estimates of how many people each person infected with Covid-19 is spreading the virus to were drawn up by the UK’s pandemic modelling body SPI(M) this week.

The different independent modelling groups based in universities and public health bodies are represented on SPI(M), which is a sub-committee of the UK’s main scientific advisory body Sage.

The rate for Wales was calculated on Tuesday at between 0.7 and 1.0 with a central estimate of 0.8 – meaning that everyone infected with the virus is infecting slightly fewer than one other person.

This is a slight dip on the figure last week when the range was estimated to be exactly the same but with a central estimate of 0.9.

People in Scotland appear to be spreading the virus to the fewest other people. The latest rate was calculated as being between 0.6 and 0.8. Scotland publishes significantly more information about how the virus is spreading every week than Wales.

The R number in most regions of England also appears to be slightly slower than in Wales at 0.7-0.9 in every region apart from the North-West, which has a R number of 0.7-1.0 and the SouthWest, which has a R number of 0.6-0.9.

The growth rate is different from the R number as it shows how long each cycle of infections is taking. In other words, if each person infects another three people, as was happening at the start of the pandemic, is the time taking for that to happen speeding up or slowing down.

The estimates from the pandemic modelling body SPI(M) informs the scientific advice given to the governments in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England by their chief medical officials.

According to the Welsh Government, the reason for the now seemingly higher R rate is that cases in Wales are now very low. For example across the whole country the amount of people in ICU from the virus is below 40.

This means there is a smaller sample size to draw the R rate from, making that number more volitale.

One Welsh Government official told the Echo that once cases are very low, the R rate become a “blunt instrument”.

They said that “it is better to have a very low number of cases and higher R rate, than a higher number of cases and a slightly lower R rate”.