Pick a number ..any number

I had no faith in the 'World beating' system anyway so the shambles continues.

The Office of National Statistics carry out properly constructed random COVID testing surveys, monthly, if not weekly, which give a much more reliable figure for the incidence of COVID in the population and accurate month-on-month comparison figures. However it doesn't identify individual cases, so that they can be identified and treated or quarantined

So not only were 15000 (? who knows) positive cases not reported, no track and tracing was done on the contacts of those tested positive. World beating? I’ll say

I agree with you janeainsworth that the KCL figures are probably a better indication of cases.

It concerns me that commentators have been saying for the last few days that the graph is flattening out and have been generally optimistic. Now it appears the grounds for optimism were faulty and the number of cases continues to rise.

It just seems to me that nobody's got a grip. Goodness knows how many different "rules" there are for different parts of the country, never mind the four countries in the UK. It's no wonder people seem to be doing their own thing.

Point taken, suzie.

Pantglas2

Other countries have done this in the past few months.....it’s not news!

?????

jane the point I am making is that this is a technical failure in a world beating expensive system - not the accuracy of the number of infected people overall . I understand that completely. The system such as it is should not be having glitches like this

The figures can never have been accurate though, because many many people will have had mild symptoms, not been tested and not shown up in the official figures.
NB I’m not excusing in any way the shambolic handling by the government. It’s a disgrace.

But the figures I look at are those from the Covid-19 app from Kings College. They are an estimate based on app users’ information but I think they give a more accurate idea of what’s really going on.

Other countries have done this in the past few months.....it’s not news!

My DH at first refused to believe me when I read it out to him from Twitter. So basically we have no damn idea what the figures are since 24 September ( and who knows about before) so how can we know about trends or well anything for that matter. As I’ve said before we are well and truly stuffed - still I expect it’s all our fault. And btw have you seen Stanley Johnson is at it again- mask under his chin. He’s just laughing at us isn’t he? Also story about how he broke his wife’s nose in a row. Late night Twitter is full of fun

We've just been saying the same thing. It truly is shocking.