89032
  • Log in
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

Why Did Sajid Javid Tell Parliament that Daily Covid Infections are 16 Times Higher Than the Latest ONS Estimate?

by Will Jones
14 December 2021 7:00 AM

According to Health Secretary Sajid Javid, there are currently 4,713 confirmed Omicron infections in the U.K. But in his statement to Parliament yesterday he added that the UKHSA has estimated the true current number of new daily Omicron infections to be around 200,000 (I assume in England, though he didn’t say). He added that this represents around 20% of the current estimated daily infections in England, including 44% in London. Note that these UKHSA figures are based on modelling that has not been released to the public.

Separately, the UKHSA has reported that just 10 people so far have been admitted to hospital in England with the Omicron variant (most of whom are double-vaccinated).

On transmissibility, early UKHSA estimates for the household secondary attack rate (the proportion of household contacts an infected person infects) using contact tracing data is 21.6% for Omicron and 10.7% for Delta. This suggests Omicron (incidentally, pronounced with a short ‘O’ as in orange, not a long ‘O’ as in over – omega is the Greek letter that signifies a long O) may be around twice as transmissible as Delta in the current population. However, to put this in context, note that the Alpha direct secondary attack rate in December 2020 was estimated by the UKHSA at 15.5%, while the Omicron estimate is based on a small number of infections and, according to the UKHSA, “may be influenced by improved ascertainment around Omicron cases”. The equivalent figure for “Omicron confirmed, highly probable, probable or possible” is 15.2%. In any case, even on the likely inflated figure of 21.6% it means that only around one in five household contacts of those with Omicron go on to test positive, and the difference in absolute terms between Omicron and earlier variants is only that 5-10% more of a person’s contacts become infected.

New daily reported infections in Gauteng province, South Africa, the original epicentre of Omicron, continue to plateau with no rise for over a week now.

New daily reported infections in Gauteng, South Africa

The threat from Omicron therefore appears to be being hugely exaggerated. That includes in the figures quoted by the Health Secretary in Parliament. For if, as Mr Javid implied, 200,000 daily Omicron infections in England is 20% of the total, then the Government must believe there to be currently around one million daily SARS-CoV-2 infections in England, or seven million a week. It’s very hard to square that with the latest ONS estimate that in the week ending December 1st, 891,500 people in England were infected with SARS-CoV-2. Since that is a prevalence estimate, you can roughly halve it to get a weekly incidence estimate (assuming people test positive on average for two weeks), giving 445,750 new weekly infections. That means the UKHSA is estimating a weekly incidence figure roughly 16 times or 1,500% higher than the ONS’s most recent estimate. That simply isn’t plausible and the Government needs to do a much better job of calibrating its data estimates, particularly when providing information to lawmakers ahead of a crucial vote.

What’s more, the number of daily infections in England reported on the Government dashboard for the week ending December 1st is around 37,500, which gives a weekly figure of around 262,500. That means, if we take the ONS estimates as the reality, the Government’s testing programme is only finding around 59% of weekly infections. That means fully 41% of all SARS-CoV-2 infections, or 183,250 every week, are being missed completely. What is the point of all this testing, tracing and isolating if not far off a half of all infections, nearly two hundred thousand a week, are being missed entirely?

That problem is dwarfed, however, by the situation if you take the UKHSA’s incidence estimate as the real situation, as the Health Secretary yesterday implied that MPs should. In that case, the Government is only finding a measly 4.2% of infections each week (using the daily dashboard figure for the most recent week of 42,000 a day or 294,000 a week). Of course, the UKHSA estimate is totally implausible and it is disgraceful that it was presented to Parliament at all. But assuming it to be true, it would mean the test and trace system was even more completely useless.

In truth, while test and trace is pointless even on ONS estimates, as it misses over 40% of infections, it isn’t as bad as the ludicrous UKHSA estimate would imply. It is a scandal that the UKHSA’s obviously wayward, inflated modelling was presented to MPs ahead of today’s vote.

Tags: Daily CasesOmicron VariantONSSecondary attack rateUKHSA

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

And Finally…

Next Post

There’s No Hint of a Negative Association Between Stringency Index and Excess Mortality in Europe

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

121 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

 

DONATE

PODCAST

Nick Dixon and Toby Young Talk About Trump’s Arrest, the Police’s Preference for Wokery Over Free Speech and the Glorious Implosion of the SNP

by Will Jones
21 March 2023
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editors Picks

Latest UN Climate Doom Report Falsely Claims Global Temperatures Are “Highest for 125,000 Years”

21 March 2023
by Chris Morrison

Government Makes Laughable Claim the MHRA is “Globally Recognised for Requiring High Standards of Safety and Effectiveness”

21 March 2023
by Nick Denim

News Round-Up

21 March 2023
by Will Jones

Net Zero Must Be Brought Forward by a Decade to Stop “Climate Time Bomb”, Says UN

20 March 2023
by Will Jones

Boris Makes His Partygate Defence

21 March 2023
by Will Jones

Government Makes Laughable Claim the MHRA is “Globally Recognised for Requiring High Standards of Safety and Effectiveness”

52

Latest UN Climate Doom Report Falsely Claims Global Temperatures Are “Highest for 125,000 Years”

34

Net Zero Must Be Brought Forward by a Decade to Stop “Climate Time Bomb”, Says UN

64

Boris Makes His Partygate Defence

17

Biden Orders U.S. Intelligence to Release All Documents on Covid Origins and Any Links to the Wuhan Lab Within 90 days

14

Is the Met “Institutionally Racist”?

21 March 2023
by Will Jones

Latest UN Climate Doom Report Falsely Claims Global Temperatures Are “Highest for 125,000 Years”

21 March 2023
by Chris Morrison

Government Makes Laughable Claim the MHRA is “Globally Recognised for Requiring High Standards of Safety and Effectiveness”

21 March 2023
by Nick Denim

Intelligence of German Children May Have Fallen During Lockdown

20 March 2023
by Noah Carl

It Was A ‘Vaccine Strategy’ From The Start

18 March 2023
by Alex Starling

POSTS BY DATE

December 2021
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Nov   Jan »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Please note: To be able to comment on our articles you'll need to be a registered donor

Already have an account?
Please click here to login Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment