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Coronavirus cases in England are doubling every seven to eight days, research has revealed in the latest figures to show a resurgence of Covid-19.
The study, known as React-1, is a population surveillance study that began in May and uses swabs of approximately 120,000 to 160,000 randomly selected people in England from 315 local authority areas each month to track the spread of the coronavirus using PCR analysis: the “you have it now” test.
“The prevalence of the virus in the population is increasing. We found evidence that it has accelerated in late August and early September, “said Steven Riley, professor of infectious disease dynamics at Imperial College London and a co-author of the paper.
The findings came when, elsewhere, the latest R figure for the UK was reported to be between 1.0 and 1.2, with the number of new infections somewhere between a 1% reduction and a 3% increase each day. .
Previous rounds of the study revealed a decreasing prevalence of Covid-19, even as lockdown restrictions were relaxed: based on data for the period June 19 to July 8, the prevalence of Covid in the general population was low and was halved every eight to nine. days.
However, the results of the fourth round of the survey suggest that this is no longer the case. While the latest findings from the React study have not yet been peer-reviewed, the researchers say that swabs collected between August 22 and September 7 from more than 150,000 people revealed 136 positive tests, suggesting that 13 people out of 10,000 in the general population had Covid-19.
