FIASCO OVER COVID COUNT
Crucial daily toll mired in confusion as ‘glitch’ means 16,000 cases are missed in a week – then suddenly added to total
A FURIOUS row erupted over the UK’s daily Covid figures last night as experts warned that the confusion is undermining the Government’s pandemic response.
The daily totals rocketed over the weekend after a ‘ technical glitch’ resulted in officials adding on thousands of cases that were missed last week.
Public Health England last night admitted nearly 16,000 cases had been missed in the space of a week – most of them in the past few days. The admission suggests the pandemic is growing faster than previously thought.
On Friday, the daily tally stood at 6,968 positive cases, comparable to the level it had been all week. But on Saturday, it rose abruptly to 12,872, and yesterday’s tally was more than three times higher – a record 22,961
new cases. The accuracy of the figures is essential for determining the way ministers respond to the pandemic – particularly in local areas. The localised lockdowns that cover a quarter of the UK population are already the subject of controversy, with many claiming they are unfair and arbitrary. In other developments:
■ Boris Johnson warned Britons of ‘bumpy’ months ahead and a ‘tough winter’ as he dramatically rowed back on his previous optimism about Christmas;
■ He also admitted he was ‘frustrated’ with delays in the NHS Test and Trace system;
■ Ministers were putting the finishing touches to a new traffic-light system which could pave the way for harsher restrictions such as the closure of all pubs in a certain area;
■ Reports suggested that next year’s school exams would be delayed by three weeks;
■ Trials of an air passenger testing regime are expected to begin within weeks in a victory for the Mail’s Get Britain Flying campaign;
■ A hard-hitting report claimed the Government’s pandemic policies had made vulnerable care home residents ‘expendable’ and violated their fundamental human rights;
■ Health minister Lord Bethell claimed Britain will look back at its Covid-19 response ‘like the Olympics’ and be ‘extremely proud’.
Professor Paul Hunter, an epidemiologist at the University of East Anglia, said last night: ‘Clearly in the management of any epidemic you need good-quality data – without that data it is very difficult to respond. It is a real problem.’
Government adviser Professor Graham Medley, who sits on the Sage emergency panel, said: ‘Reporting delays play havoc with data streams and make them very difficult to analyse in real time. If the delays change or vary by group then they can distort a lot. I wonder what these will do to the R estimates next week?’
Dr Duncan Robertson, an expert in modelling and policy analytics at Loughborough University, added: ‘It is important to understand the reason for the delay.
‘If this is a reporting delay, that is bad enough, but if there have been delays in putting these cases into the NHS Test and Trace database, that can have serious implications for spreading the disease.’
Yesterday, the Department of Health said the unusually high case numbers over the weekend were due to a ‘technical error’ in reporting figures over eight days between September 24 and October 1.
Over that period – during which time many commentators pointed to early signs of a ‘levelling-off’ – many cases were apparently missed from the daily infection total.
Critics said if there was a real spike in cases in the coming days it could be missed, because it is impossible to tell which infections are new and which are simply the backlog filtering through.
Mr Johnson insisted yesterday that the problem had been resolved. ‘It was a computing issue,’ he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. ‘But all the people who had a positive test have now been notified.’
Mr Johnson and his scientific advisers have repeatedly pointed to rising case numbers to justify tighter regulations.
Local restrictions are dependent on infection data. A swing of a dozen cases in a week in a small town or borough is enough to be the difference between lockdown being imposed or businesses and families being allowed to continue as normal.