COVID hospital admissions have “peaked” – proving the dramatic fall in cases was a sign the UK is beating back the bug.
One expert hailed the official figures released yesterday as “further evidence” we’re through the third wave.
Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, The Norwich School of Medicine, University of East Anglia, said: “Today’s figures show a continuing decline in the number of new cases of Covid being reported on the DHSC dashboard.
“Today’s figures are important as they represent the first day that any impact of the opening of society on the 19th July would have been obvious in the statistics.
“In addition we can now see that in England new admissions to hospital have peaked.
“Data for the UK as a whole is only available up to 27th July because some devolved nations take somewhat longer to report their admission data.
“Today’s figure for England of 593 admissions (for Saturday 31st July) is 19% down on the previous Saturday’s number.
“The fact that hospital admissions are now falling provides further evidence that the decline in cases in the last couple of weeks was real and not due to an artefact from changing testing or people deleting the NHS Covid app as some have suggested.”
It comes as another expert said he thinks Britain could now be “over the edge” of the third wave.
Jamie Jenkins, former head of health statistics at the Office for National Statistics, told LBC cases have been falling since July 19.
He said: “I think looking at the data, we normally see deaths peaking around 14 days after cases come down, I think we might start being over the hill now when it comes to deaths.”
It comes as:
- The NHS Covid app has been tweaked so fewer contacts have to self-isolate from today
- Virus patients of any age are at risk of suffering a heart attack in the first two weeks after contracting the illness, experts have warned
- The PM refuses to rule out a new ‘amber watch list’ – and admitted his concern over new variants
- Bin lorry drivers are being offered £3,000 bonuses to clear a huge backlog of rubbish
- China forces millions back into lockdown as the Delta variant hits 20 cities in the biggest outbreak since Wuhan
Mr Jenkins added: “We probably are over the edge of the wave at the moment but let’s have a bit of caution as we go into the autumn period.”
He said hospital admissions are around 80 per cent lower than what they would have been in the past and deaths were 90 per cent lower.
The expert explained: “The vaccine effect has kicked in as well – if you look at the same number of cases to what we had in the winter, it would have been 800 deaths rather than 65-70.”
It comes after daily Covid cases dropped to the lowest figure recorded in five weeks yesterday – with another 21,952 positive tests in 24 hours.
It’s hoped the UK may now be past the peak of the third wave after new infections dropped by 12 per cent in a week.
Britain’s successful jabs roll-out has been heralded for breaking the link between infections and severe illness – and this weekend, it was reported that 32million of us will be offered a booster jab this autumn.
Those who were given the Pfizer vaccination will be offered a third dose if they’re over 50 or their immune system is suppressed.
And health chiefs are continuing with their push to get youngsters jabbed – as one expert said he fears they believe “infections don’t matter”.
The NHS Covid app is at last being watered down so fewer people are “pinged” and sent into self isolation.
Only those in contact with a Covid case two days prior will be told to stay at home, compared to the current five days, the Government announced.
It will hopefully save thousands of people from needlessly quarantining at home despite negative test results.
The move aims to encourage people to keep using the app, after it caused chaos across the UK.
