Despite a massive effort by the UK government over the last 3 months to convince the public that an easing of lockdown and the resumption of “normal” behaviour would surely result in a ‘Second Wave‘ of coronavirus – the opposite happened, as the government’s own records reveal that there were no overall rises in COVID infections after schools and shops were re-opened.
These findings are also consistent with other reputable analytical sources, including those published by top British scientist Carl Heneghan from Oxford’s Center for Evidence Based Medicine who recently showed that COVID cases in England are not rising as various overzealous government officials and their mainstream media partners have claimed.
Of course, inconvenient truths like this have not deterred the government from pushing forward with its rolling ‘New Normal” propaganda campaign which some leading critics have dubbed “Project Fear.”
All of this has left many people wondering whether or not Boris Johnson’s ‘COVID crisis’ policies will ever be updated to reflect reams of new data which clearly shows that the virus is no longer a serious threat to the general population of the United Kingdom?
The UK’s Telegraph newspaper reports….
The easing of lockdown restrictions did not result in an increase in Covid-19 infection rates in England, the largest swab testing survey carried out to date has found.
Although there are fears that releasing measures too soon has led to localised spikes in some areas, new data suggests that there was no overall rise after primary schools returned and non-essential shops reopened.
According to Imperial College London and Ipsos Mori, community prevalence actually fell after lockdown measures were relaxed, decreasing from 12 infections per 10,000 people in May to eight in 10,000 by mid-June to early July.
Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said: “This research highlights how, thanks to everyone’s efforts and sacrifice, alongside targeted measures to counter the spread of this virus in health and care settings, we were able to keep rates of infection low as some restrictions were lifted.
“However, we must not be complacent. I urge everyone to get a test if you have symptoms, self-isolate and provide your contacts to NHS Test and Trace so we can continue to keep the virus at bay and get back to normal.”
Researchers carried out initial swab testing of 150,000 people in May, while full lockdown was still in place, and again following the easing of restrictions.
Of the 159,199 swab tests carried out in the latest two weeks, just 123 were positive.
At any one point in the two weeks between June 19 and July 8, there were 39,000 people with Covid-19, compared to 74,000 in May.
The overall reproduction ‘R’ number was calculated at around 0.58, compared to 0.57 during May.
Steven Riley, professor of infectious disease dynamics at Imperial College, said: “The epidemic has transitioned out of lockdown phase but prevalence has continued to decrease.
“We estimate a decrease in prevalence from 0.13 per cent to 0.077 per cent. We have to be a little bit careful because the last data were for early July, but we did estimate that the ‘R’ number was still below one then…
Continue this story at The Telegraph
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