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Swab tests on more than 105,000 people have shown that Covid-19 infections are on the decline in England, according to an interim report from the Community Transmission Real-Time Assessment Program (REACT).
The report includes the results of home coronavirus tests carried out between November 13 and 24 and shows that “around 0.96% of the UK population is infected with the virus, or around 1 in 100”.
“This represents a drop of about 30% in the number of infections compared to previous results, where more than 1 in 80 people or 1.3% of people had the virus on November 2,” according to researchers from the Imperial College of London and Ipsos MORI.
England’s four-week nationwide lockdown, which has seen non-essential businesses shut down and residents banned from mixing with other households, began on November 5 and will end on Wednesday.
It came after the UK experienced a second wave of infection, which particularly affected parts of northern England. The government introduced a localized system for the country, whereby regions with high infections were subject to tighter restrictions than other regions. England will return to a tiered system on Wednesday.
Cases have fallen across most of the country, including in former hot spots, and in most age groups except those of school age, where there has been an increase, said Researchers. Schools remained open during the second national lockdown, while they were closed during the first lockdown in the spring.
The researchers also drew attention to the fact that “the virus has an uneven impact” on people, health workers, people living in large households and people belonging to ethnic minorities all at higher risk. infection.
“We are seeing a decline in infections nationally and particularly in regions that were previously the most affected. These trends suggest that the tiered approach has helped reduce infections in these areas and that the lockdown has added to that. effect, “said Paul Elliott, program director at Imperial.
Research has also shown that the R number (or reproduction number, which indicates how many other people each infected person transmits the virus to) has fallen below 1 to around 0.88, “meaning that the country’s epidemic is currently shrinking rather than growing, “the researchers said.
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