One in five people across England might have had COVID-19, new modeling suggests, equivalent to 12.4 million people, rising to almost one in two in some areas.
It means that across England the true number of people infected to date might be five times as high as the total number of known cases, according to the government dashboard.
In some areas, the disparity might be even greater, with parts of London and the south estimated to have had up to eight times as many cases as have been detected to date.
Photo: Reuters
The analysis, by Edge Health, reveals that the total number of actual COVID-19 infections in England could be as high as 12.4 million — equivalent to 22 percent of people across England — as of Sunday last week.
The government’s test-and-trace program had detected 2.4 million cases by the same date.
The model estimates the number of cases in an area by comparing its number of deaths against an estimated infection fatality rate. It assumes a three-week lag between recorded cases and any associated deaths.
The results suggest that more than 10 percent of residents in 138 of England’s 149 upper-tier local authorities have contracted the disease.
The model suggests that two in five people have been infected in six London and southeastern local authorities: Barking and Dagenham, Newham, Thurrock, Redbridge, Havering and Tower Hamlets.
The London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, and Newham are estimated to have had more than 100,000 infections each, about 54.2 percent and 49 percent of their populations respectively.
Official figures from Public Health England show that just fewer than 14,700 cases had been recorded in Barking and Dagenham, and just fewer than 21,700 in Newham by Sunday last week.
“Reported tests are only a fraction of the picture of total infections, which show how badly hit London and the northwest have been during the pandemic,” Edge Health cofounder and director George Batchelor said. “It is incredible that the level of understanding of where and how infections are occurring is not greater at this stage, since it would allow control measures to be more targeted.”
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