Britain: 10% of cases since the beginning of the year are said to be re-infections

Alleged re-infections account for about 10% of Covid-19 cases in the UK so far this year, according to a Reuters analysis, after the UK Health and Safety Authority (UKHSA) changed the way it calculates coronavirus data.

With an increasing number of people being re-infected with the disease since the Omicron variant began to dominate in late 2021, Britain on Monday began incorporating possible re-infections of the disease into its daily data.

“Re-infection remained very low until the start of the Omicron wave. It is true that our daily reporting procedures reflect how the virus changed,” said Steven Riley, Director of Data at UKHSA.

Overall cases continued to decline, he added.

Prior to December 6, the daily incidence rate in England that was thought to be re-infections was hovering below 2% for almost six months.

This percentage is estimated to have increased to 9.9% so far in 2022, according to a Reuters analysis from UKHSA data.

In Italy, a spokesman for the National Institutes of Health said re-infection cases now account for about 3% of all infections, up from about 1.5% before the onset of Omicron.

Monday’s data transducer, which records positive Covid tests separately for at least 90 days as separate infections, extended back to the beginning of the pandemic.

The UKHSA has reported 588,000 possible re-infections in the UK to date, bringing the total number recorded in the UK to 17.3 million.

The first suspected re-infection in England was recorded on 19 June 2020.

In the past, only people who tested positive for the first time were counted in Britain’s daily Covid statistics.

Yesterday Monday, 92,368 new infections were registered and 51 deaths in a period of 24 hours.

Britain has reported a total of 155,754 deaths from COVID-19, the seventh highest number in the world.

Source: AMPE