The British government estimates less than 10,000 people a day are contracting COVID-19, health minister Matt Hancock said on Thursday, less than during the pandemic’s peak, even as numbers testing positive have risen to similar levels.
“(At the peak), we estimate through surveys that over 100,000 people a day were catching disease, but we only found around 6,000 of them, and they tested positive. Now we estimate that it’s under 10,000 people a day getting the disease. That’s too high, but it’s still much lower than in the peak,” he told Sky News on Thursday.
Britain reported 6,178 new daily cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday.
Hancock also said the proportion of people getting a so-called false positive test result is below 1%.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has faith in his top medical adviser, Hancock said later Thursday in comments to the BBC, after reports said the government had sought advice on the COVID-19 pandemic elsewhere.
Hancock was asked about a report that Johnson had asked Sweden’s top epidemiologist for advice, and whether Johnson had lost faith in England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty.
“No, on the contrary… There are reasonable disagreements between scientists and the role of Chris Whitty as chief medical officer is to try to synthesise all of that scientific advice and present what he thinks is the best possible scientific analysis,” Hancock told BBC Radio.
“Then we take decisions based on that advice and of course, listening to voices right across the board, it’s only natural that we should.”
