Based on this article, I’d guess mostly reduced testing following “freedom day”:
So, what could be behind the drop in new infections, and is it too early to be celebrating? The Office of National Statistics (ONS) weekly infection survey … showed the estimated prevalence of infections in England had actually risen from 1 in 75 people to 1 in 65 in the week to July 24.
The ONS survey aims to estimate infection numbers in the community beyond people who have been tested, and gives an estimate of COVID-19′s prevalence that is unaffected by fluctuations in people putting their hands up to be tested.
The good news in this is that with the ~88% vaccination rate reducing the death rate in vulnerable and elderly populations, there won’t be anywhere near as many casualties as a ‘let it rip’ approach to herd immunity would have seen before. And at some point the UK will run out of unvaccinated uninfected people; hopefully before sharing another variant with the rest of us -_-.
So I don’t think your theory passes the sniff test. I’m personally very confused about the drop in cases, and none of the theories I’ve heard seem likely.
Isn’t “prevalence of infections … [rising] … in the week to July 24” completely consistent with the cases peaking on the 16th? Given people are infected for ~10 days, and cases were higher in the week to 24th than the equivalent period 10 days earlier.
Calculating the 10-day rolling average of cases* in the UK (from here) I think that the prevalence should have increased by ~10%. The prevalence increasing by 15% obviously suggests there was some affect of fewer people being tested but also cases are definitely declining. (Usually attributed to schools doing less testing rather than ‘freedom day’)
* cases calculated using a rolling 7-day average re-centered on each day to remove weekly seasonality
This seems highly unlikely. There hasn’t been a significant drop in testing, and Scotland (which saw an earlier peak) has also seen a drop in hospitalizations, which are much harder to fake.
Based on this article, I’d guess mostly reduced testing following “freedom day”:
The good news in this is that with the ~88% vaccination rate reducing the death rate in vulnerable and elderly populations, there won’t be anywhere near as many casualties as a ‘let it rip’ approach to herd immunity would have seen before. And at some point the UK will run out of unvaccinated uninfected people; hopefully before sharing another variant with the rest of us -_-.
I disagree. Daily tests have only gone down slightly, which is to be expected if less people are getting infected (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-per-day?country=~GBR)
And crucially, it’s not only total positive tests per day that has been dropping; the share of positive tests has also been going down significantly: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/uk-covid-positivity
So I don’t think your theory passes the sniff test.
I’m personally very confused about the drop in cases, and none of the theories I’ve heard seem likely.
Isn’t “prevalence of infections … [rising] … in the week to July 24” completely consistent with the cases peaking on the 16th? Given people are infected for ~10 days, and cases were higher in the week to 24th than the equivalent period 10 days earlier.
Calculating the 10-day rolling average of cases* in the UK (from here) I think that the prevalence should have increased by ~10%. The prevalence increasing by 15% obviously suggests there was some affect of fewer people being tested but also cases are definitely declining. (Usually attributed to schools doing less testing rather than ‘freedom day’)
* cases calculated using a rolling 7-day average re-centered on each day to remove weekly seasonality
This seems highly unlikely. There hasn’t been a significant drop in testing, and Scotland (which saw an earlier peak) has also seen a drop in hospitalizations, which are much harder to fake.