Ten per cent of London’s population may have caught coronavirus
Ten per cent of London’s population are estimated to have coronavirus antibodies, compared to around four per cent of the UK population, the government’s chief scientific adviser said today.
“In London, it might be from that time, maybe 10 percent of people positive for antibodies, suggesting that’s the sort of range of infection, and across the country, different levels in different places, but on average somewhere around four percent,” Sir Patrick Vallance told the government’s daily coronavirus press conference.
The serology tests, which can show if someone had the virus and produced antibodies for it, were carried out two weeks ago and may reflect the picture three weeks earlier than that.
Vallance said the tests showed that around ten per cent of London’s population had coronavirus antibodies and around four per cent of the UK’s population also showed antibodies.
Vallance said around 130,000 people across the country may be infected with the disease right now, but said lower estimates of 65,000 to 75,000, or higher estimates of up to 250,000 were also possible.
“Because the R [reproduction number] is less than one that should be coming down…the halving time should be two weeks,” he added.
The reproduction number is the number of people that one infected person will pass the virus to, on average.
An R of less than one means that the number of infected people in the population will decrease.
Figures released today by the Department of Health showed a further 210 people died after testing positive for covid-19 as of 5pm on Sunday.
A total of 233,060 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the UK as of 9am today, an increase of 3,877 from the day before.