The scale of coronavirus testing is incomparable to what it was at the beginning of the pandemic. Leaders of many European countries, including France, Spain and Italy, are expressing concern about the increasing number of people infected with the coronavirus. France ranks third in Europe in terms of deaths (over 30,000), behind only the United Kingdom and Spain. Recently, a record number of daily infections was set there – about 1,700, and in total, more than 344,000 people in France have been infected or recovered from coronavirus infection. France ranks seventh in the world in terms of the number of deaths from Covid-19, and authorities are closely monitoring the situation with the spread of the virus in order to strengthen local quarantine measures if necessary.
French authorities are concerned that a second wave of infection could hit the country in November. In Spain, where quarantine measures were eased in June but remain quite strict, the number of cases has risen sharply since July, with more than 534,000 cases identified in the country. Spain is only slightly behind France in the number of deaths. In Great Britain, which holds the European record for the number of infected cases, the number of new cases has exceeded two thousand in the last three days alone. The average growth rate of infection is four times higher than in mid-July. But do these alarming numbers reflect the true picture? Before you panic, experts suggest you pay attention to five important factors.
We explain quickly, simply, and clearly what happened, why it matters, and what will happen next. эпизоды → Episodes End of story: Podcast Advertising. We are already familiar with the table of confirmed coronavirus cases: it shows the daily number of positive tests for Covid-19. In April, there were around 6,000 new cases registered in the UK, so the last few days have been close to the peak. However, at the beginning of the pandemic in the UK, as in virtually all European countries, testing was carried out almost exclusively on patients in hospitals, as no one was prepared for mass testing. And selective testing meant that the majority of the population did not have access to doctors, whereas now testing has become truly widespread. Therefore, comparing today’s numbers with those of the so-called peak period observed in March-April is simply wrong. According to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the number of people infected in March could have been as high as 100,000 per day. But no one knew about it, because the scale of testing did not begin to increase until mid-March, and it has only recently become widespread in Britain (it happened earlier in Germany and Spain). It is clear that even today it is not possible to identify all infected individuals, but it is not the assumed 5% as it was at the beginning of the pandemic. So even though statistically the number of infected people is growing, the level of infection today is much lower than it was at its peak.
The expansion of testing capabilities has given authorities a free hand. The UK government now has over a hundred mobile laboratories that can be deployed to infection hotspots. And although there are still problems with laboratory capacity, and it is still sometimes very difficult for people in the UK, for example, to get tested, doctors can now focus on areas with the highest infection rates. In such areas, testing is being offered even to people who have no obvious symptoms. The same is happening in other countries. In Spain, for example, entire regions are being tested where the number of infections is increasing. By paying special attention to these hotbeds, the likelihood of a positive test is significantly increased. For example, a quarter of all new infections in the United Kingdom last week were detected in 20 local authorities, which represent only 5% of the total number of local authorities in the country. In recent days, the number of hospital admissions with a coronavirus diagnosis in the UK has increased slightly, but not as rapidly as the number of infected cases. The situation is a far cry from March, when hospitals were literally overcrowded. The same situation can be observed in Spain and France.
One explanation is that testing detects mild cases of infection that do not require hospitalization. Another factor is that the majority of those infected are young people who tend to catch the disease easily. However, the increase in morbidity reminds us that the virus has not gone away and that a rapid escalation of the pandemic is still possible. According to England’s public health system, people between the ages of 20 and 39 are more likely to be infected with the coronavirus than people in other age groups, and their infection rate is higher than at any time during the pandemic. The question is why this is happening. The reasons may be behavioral or demographic: young people often have to go to work, this work may involve closer communication with people, young people often share an apartment or house with friends, finally, they are more inclined to socialize outside the home, going to bars and nightclubs. But it may also be because coronavirus testing has become available to a wider range of people. Young people are much less likely to become seriously ill with coronavirus than other populations, so at the beginning of the pandemic they were much less likely to end up in hospitals where they could be tested. With the introduction of mass testing, many more cases of infection have been detected in this population, but they do not affect the picture in hospitals because most cases are mild and do not require hospitalization.