During the week ending 24 July, the number of cases of new coronavirus infections continued to rise in the UK, with the exception of Scotland, where the percentage of people testing positive has dropped, according to the Institute of Statistics, which nevertheless notes a possible slowdown in the pandemic in England.
Based on a sample of the population, the institute estimates that 856,200 people in England were infected this week, each 65, the same proportion as in Northern Ireland; in Scotland one in 110 people are infected, and in Wales one in 160.
These figures are in contrast to reports of new daily cases reported by the UK health authorities, which have raised eyebrows between scientists and the government as the end of the restrictions coincides with the start of school holidays.
After a sharp rise in new infections since early summer due to the highly contagious variant of Delta, the UK recently reported up to 60,000 new cases in 24 hours, but the daily number of new infections declined before starting to rise again in recent days.
The number of hospitalizations is growing (almost 6,300 in the last seven days, an increase of 21%), as is the number of deaths (499 in the last seven days, an increase of almost 29%), for a total of more than 129,000 deaths, which is one of the most serious results in Europe.
According to the latest report from Agence France-Presse, the covid-19 pandemic has caused at least 4,202,179 deaths worldwide out of more than 196.5 million cases of the novel coronavirus.
The respiratory illness is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, discovered at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently variants identified in countries such as the UK, India, South Africa, Brazil and Peru.
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