Britain’s daily wave of Covid shrinks again as hospital admissions drop by a quarter and cases drop

The Covid wave in the UK still shows no signs of exacerbation as both cases and hospitalizations continue to fall.

The heads of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) have registered an additional 12,487 positive tests in the past 24 hours, a decline of one tenth per week.

Case numbers are becoming increasingly unreliable as free Pap tests are discontinued for the vast majority of Brits. Conservative experts and parliamentarians have urged the government to remove the daily updates as the final piece of its “living with Covid” strategy.

Daily UKHSA data also show 896 infected people were admitted to UK hospitals on Sunday, the latest daily figures available. This had decreased by a quarter in a week.

The number of British infected in hospitals fell to 11,256, the lowest level in two months.

In the 28 days after the positive test, 438 more deaths were announced today, 76.6% more than last week. But daily counts can vary greatly.

Analysis by the World Health Organization today revealed that the global death rate from a pandemic is almost three times the official number. With a more detailed look at the death toll from the pandemic, WHO estimates that around 15 million deaths were recorded from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2021. The current official death toll from viruses is 6.2 million.

In the most comprehensive review of the number of deaths from the pandemic to date, WHO estimates around 15 million deaths between early 2020 and late 2021. An additional 437 deaths per 100,000 people are predicted. The United States had the 40th highest death rate (140 per 100,000), while the UK came in at 56th (109 per 100,000).

UKHSA data shows that England reported 10,311 cases, Scotland registered 1,663 infections, Northern Ireland registered 362 infections and Wales reported 151 cases.

Nearly 280,000 test results were reported in the last 24 hours, compared to more than 2 million per day at the peak of the Omicron wave in January.

Nearly 22.1 million positive tests have been reported since the start of the epidemic.

Hospital records show an additional 896 Covid-infected patients were hospitalized in the UK on 1 May, down 23.4% from 1,169 hospitalizations the previous week.

And the number of virus patients admitted has dropped 17.8 percent from seven days ago to 11,256.

Data from NHS England show that only 40% of infected patients are hospitalized mainly because they are not well with the virus, with the remainder seeking hospital care for other reasons.

Mortality data show that 438 deaths were recorded within 28 days of a positive test, an increase of 76.6% from the 248-day deaths recorded the week before.

WHO analysis revealed that the death rate for Covid today is almost three times the official calculation of 14.9 million.

By comparison, the current official death toll from the virus is 6.2 million, with a third of that in the United States, Brazil and India.

The UN agency’s tally, missing for all of 2022, includes people who have died directly as a result of Covid or the impact of the virus on overwhelmed health systems.

The WHO said 20 countries, including the UK and the US, were responsible for more than 80% of the estimated “excess deaths” in the first two years of the pandemic.

The vast majority (84%) of victims were in Southeast Asia (5.9 million), Europe (3.3 million), and the Americas (3.23 million), followed by Africa (1.3 million), the Eastern Mediterranean ( 1.1 million) and occurred in the western Pacific. (0.1 million).

Peru has the highest death rate per 100,000 population (437), followed by Bulgaria (415), Bolivia (375), North Macedonia (369) and Russia (367). The United States had the 40th highest death rate (140 per 100,000), while England ranked 56th (109 per 100,000).

The analysis also confirms that more men than men are affected by COVID, with 57% of deaths from the virus occurring among men.

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the “sobering” numbers should push countries to invest in more resilient healthcare systems to mitigate future crises.

Meanwhile, one of the government’s most outspoken science advisers today likened the capture of Covid to child abuse.

Professor Stephen Reicher, member of an influential SAGE subgroup, compared society’s past indifference to parents’ beating of their children with a perceived lack of concern about the long-term harm of the virus.

Andrews University psychologist tweeted: “Years ago we heard ‘my parents beat me and it didn’t hurt’. We don’t hear it anymore.

A lot of people today say, ‘I got Covid and it didn’t hurt me’. As the evidence builds up, they may not say that in the future.”

His comments came in response to a major Cambridge University study that showed that hospitalization with Covid can significantly age the brain.

According to research, critically ill patients may develop comparable thinking and memory-related problems at just age 20.

However, Professor Reicher faced a backlash on Twitter, where some accused him of misrepresenting the results, citing the patients hospitalized at the start of the pandemic, where the virus posed a much greater threat.

Thanks to the milder nature of Omicron, as well as increased immunity from vaccines and numerous fluctuations, Covid now causes mild illness for the majority.