Is Covid spiralling out of control? A review of the evidence

From Wednesday, it seems, we will be back in national lockdown, the government having been convinced that the second wave of Covid-19 is spiralling out of control. Not for the first time, ministers appear to have taken their cue from an Imperial College study – this time the REACT 1 study which claimed on Thursday that 100,000 people a day are being infected, and that cases are doubling every nine days.

The government is also reported to have been swung by the changing opinion of deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, who believes that a regional strategy is not longer enough to save the NHS from being overwhelmed. But are new cases really running at 100,000 a day and doubling every nine days? Not according to a team from King’s College. Based on its Covid symptom tracker app, it claims that new cases are running at more like 43,000 new cases a day.

This is not necessarily at odds with the REACT study, given that the King’s College study tracks symptomatic infections, and we know that many infections – between 30 and 80 per cent according to various estimates – are asymptomatic.