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There has been a 61% increase in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 in England in the latest weekly data, Test and Trace figures show.
More than 31,000 people were found to have the coronavirus in England between September 17 and 23, the highest weekly number since Test and Trace was launched in late May.
“Positive cases have risen steeply over the past four weeks with more than four times more positive cases identified in the most recent week compared to late August,” Test and Trace said Thursday.
The positivity rate has now for the first time exceeded the WHO-suggested level of 5%. It is 5.28%, the highest since the plan began.
The WHO said that for the virus to be under control, the proportions of tests that give a positive result must be less than 5%.
The figures contradict finds from Imperial College London which suggested that the virus might be on the decline.
Research by Imperial College London and Ipsos Mori showed the R number, a key indicator showing the the virus’s reproduction rate fell from 1.7 to 1.1 since the beginning of the month.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has implored the British to follow the rules introduced in an attempt to halt an increase in COVID-19 cases and avoid a second confinement.
In a Press conference On Wednesday, the Prime Minister’s scientific advisers warned that the virus is beginning to spiral out of control.
Sir Patrick Vallance said, “We don’t have this under control at the moment.”
“This is going in the wrong direction, there is no reason for complacency.”
Figures from Test and Trace show that the system has yet to reach 80% of the close contacts identified by those who tested positive.
This is the benchmark that the prime minister’s scientific advisers said would need to be reached to halt the spread of the virus.
According to the latest statistics, around 71.6% of close contacts of people who tested positive for COVID-19 in England were in the week ending September 23.
This is down from 76.3% for the previous week, but up from 69.9% for the week to September 2, which is the lowest weekly figure to date.
For cases handled by local health protection teams, 97.6% of the contacts were contacted and asked to self-isolate in the week ending September 23.
Those handled either online or by call centers, 64.3% of close contacts were contacted and asked to isolate themselves.
There has been an increase in the proportion of people who have a test “in person” and get their result within 24 hours.
The data shows that 38.1% of people on a regional site, local site, or mobile test unit, known as an “in-person” test, received their result within this time period.
This is a 28.2% increase from the previous week and follows weeks of problems with people accessing the tests.
Although it is down from the week ending July 1, when 94.3% of in-person test results were returned within 24 hours, the best the service has done.
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Boris Johnson had promised that, by the end of June, the results of all in-person tests would be available within 24 hours.
Only 2.9% of people in England who used a Covid-19 home test kit received their result within 24 hours a week through September 23.
This is slightly up from 1.8% the week before, which was the lowest weekly percentage since Test and Trace began.
About 30.4% of people received a home test result within 48 hours, compared to 11.3% the week before.
Analysis by Rowland Manthorpe, Technology Correspondent
This morning a large study by Imperial suggested that the outbreak was narrowing in the UK. Today’s test and trace statistics tell a different story.
It’s not just that 31,373 new people tested positive, a 61% increase over the previous week, it’s that they did so without a jump in the number of tests.
A frequently asked question is whether more tests mean more cases.
Most of the time, it does, but it’s easy to make sure you’re not influenced by it by calculating what fraction of the tests are positive, a number known as the positivity rate.
This week, the positivity rate jumped from 3.2% to 5.3, the highest rate since Test and Trace began. This is potentially a crucial milestone, as the WHO has said that for the virus to be under control, the proportions of tests that give a positive result must be less than 5%.
As always, this number comes with a big caveat: the data is extremely noisy and the Health Department cautions against using it in this way, saying that the way the data is presented makes it impossible.
But even if it only gives a trend, rather than a total population figure, we are still seeing an increase, just when we could have expected a drop.
