The U.K.’s daily Covid statistics were axed on Monday as the country moves forward in the pandemic. MailOnline has more.
The U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) will now only publish Britain-wide updates twice a week, on Monday and Thursday.
It follows pressure from Tory MPs and experts who warned the case numbers became increasingly unreliable after free Covid tests were stopped for the majority of Britons. They called for the daily figures to be ditched as the final part of the ‘living with Covid’ strategy.
The UKHSA will still publish daily England figures but headline U.K. numbers – used throughout the pandemic to remind public of situation – will be affected.
It comes as the UK today logged 26,280 new Covid cases in the last three days, the equivalent of around 8,700 each day on average, and 212 deaths, roughly 70 per day.
Ministers stopped publishing the figures on weekends following ‘Freedom Day’, meaning the Government dashboard update on Monday now also includes data for Saturday and Sunday.
The Government is relying on the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) weekly infection survey, which uses random swabbing, to get a read on the virus’ true trajectory. It also reported a drop last week.
Meanwhile, latest Covid hospital data shows there were 992 admissions for the virus on May 3rd, down nearly a fifth on the previous week.
Daily hospitalisations have now fallen for four weeks in a row – despite NHS leaders calling for masks and outdoor mixing to return at the start of April.
The move to scale-back the U.K. figures was prompted by Public Health Scotland, where the national Covid dashboard will only be update on Mondays and Thursdays. From June, it will move to weekly updates.
England should follow suit.
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