Worrying figures from the latest Coronavirus infection pilot, based on results from private households (so excluding hospitals and care homes).
Percentage of population infected increased from 0.05% to 0.07% between 1st July - 31st July, so assuming average infection time of 10 days, that gives an estimate of R=1.1 for England and Wales.
This is the best estimate of what will happen if we continue as we have in July - so even if there is no further easing of lockdown, the R-value would stay at 1.1 for the foreseeable future.
During the most recent week (20 to 26 July 2020), we estimate there were around 0.78 new COVID-19 infections for every 10,000 people in the community population in England, equating to around 4,200 new cases per day (95% credible interval: 2,200 to 8,100).
Between 26 April and 26 July, 6.2% of people tested positive for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 on a blood test, suggesting they had the infection in the past.
Further analysis indicates that we can be confident that there was a real small increase in the most recent estimated daily infection rate when compared with the lowest daily rate from the last six weeks, which was 0.05% (95% credible interval: 0.04% to 0.07%) on 1 July 2020.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... 31july2020