‘The virus is still evolving at an incredible rate’: How widespread is COVID now – and how many people are dying with it?
Exactly four years ago today the UK’s first coronavirus cases were confirmed.
On 31 January 2020, Public Health England said a University of York student from China had tested positive for COVID-19, along with his mother.
Almost two months later, the UK locked down and it was another two years until the final legal restrictions were removed – with some arguing this happened prematurely.
Now in 2024, the virus is still affecting people in ways scientists are only just beginning to fully understand – and affecting the NHS. So how prevalent is COVID today and what have we learned?
How widespread are COVID infections now?
Unsurprisingly, COVID cases are much lower than they have been at various peaks over the past four years.
But the latest data, which covers up to 10 January, estimates that 2.3% of the population of England and Scotland had COVID in the community – the equivalent of around 1.2 million people.
As people no longer report their test results, the most reliable recent estimates on COVID prevalence come from the winter infection survey, carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the UK Health Security Agency.
It is smaller than the original, regular ONS infection study that was discontinued in March 2023, and it doesn’t cover Wales or Northern Ireland.
Although the winter infection study uses lateral flow not PCR tests, the results are broadly comparable.
It shows that following the spread of the JN.1 variant, which is a sub-lineage of the BA.2.86 version of Omicron, the virus last peaked before Christmas, with highs of 4.4% between 19 and 23 December – roughly one in 23 people.
Similarly to the height of the pandemic, the peak was felt most strongly in London, with 5.5% of the capital believed to have COVID by 19 December. The lowest peak was in the North East, with 3.2% of the region thought to have had the virus by 12 December.
Will we see more waves of cases?
The recent COVID peaks are only around half what they were in spring 2022, when 7.6% of England were estimated to have the virus and 9% of Scotland.
Stephen Griffin, professor of virology at the University of Leeds, warns that although the peaks look less dramatic, repeated waves mean they add up to a very high number of cases.
“We’re still seeing multiple waves of COVID every year because the virus is still evolving at an incredible rate,” he says.
The government often cites the initial vaccine rollout as the biggest success of its COVID response.
After they were offered to everybody aged 12 and over, 85% had two doses of a vaccine by mid-2022. But additional booster jabs are now only offered to the over-65s.
And with new variants constantly emerging and most people’s vaccine protection waning, Prof Griffin says the UK is “not suppressing prevalence”, which means “we’ll continue to see those waves”.
How many people have to go to hospital for COVID now?
The pre-Christmas peak in cases didn’t result in as large numbers needing hospital treatment compared with the early days of the pandemic.
Professor Oliver Johnson, professor of information theory at the University of Bristol, says while there have been “many infections” recently, “they are much less severe on average since before we had vaccines”.
Fewer than 5,000 people with COVID have needed hospital treatment in England every week since early 2023. That number peaked at more than 25,000 in a single week in January 2021.
What impact has the anti-vax movement had?
Far fewer people are dying with COVID than before vaccines were offered to all over-18s in June 2021.
Despite the pandemic sparking a resurgence in the “anti-vax” movement, Greg Fell, Sheffield’s director of public health, says the overwhelming positive impact of vaccines on COVID mortality has undoubtedly been “good PR” for them.
“Anti-vax sentiment clearly got highlighted during COVID – but I think most people know that those vaccines really work and that in a world without them, it would be Christmas 2021 again.”
Asked whether the recent drop in MMR vaccines and the measles outbreak in the West Midlands are solely the result of anti-vax groups, he admits there has been “some outright anti-vax sentiment” around MMR that has had an impact, particularly on social media.
But he stresses that addressing “missed opportunities” to use community leaders to engage with disenfranchised groups is just as important in reversing the problem.
Prof Griffin says the delayed decision to vaccinate five to 11-year-olds in 2022 was bad for jab rates, alongside the then-health secretary Sajid Javid’s description of the programme as “non-urgent”. Data shows only around 10% of under-12s had a single dose.
“The dithering and indecision around the benefits for vaccinating children was pretty damaging in the sense that if you look at uptake in younger groups, it’s appalling,” Prof Griffin adds.
Primary courses of the vaccine are also no longer universally available for all age groups, aside from the clinically vulnerable and people who live with them.
“So children turning five after September 2022 have to wait until they’re in their 60s to have a vaccine, unless they become clinically vulnerable,” Prof Griffin says.
“The idea that repeated infections are a preferable means of generating population immunity to vaccines, especially in children, is a dangerous nonsense.”
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Doctor’s three-year struggle with long COVID
Concerns over ‘silent organ damage’ from COVID
Long COVID is defined by symptoms that persist for three months or more with no other explicable cause. Almost two million people in the UK had the condition at the time of the latest ONS survey in March 2023.
Studies have put the extra cost to UK GP and other primary care services at an estimated £23m a year – with annual losses to the workforce and greater economic cost thought to be as much as £1.5bn.
A Canadian study suggested that for people infected three times or more, long COVID rates were around 38%.
Dr Rae Duncan, a consultant cardiologist and long COVID research clinician at Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, warns that studies are beginning to suggest serious complications from COVID that could lie dormant for years.
“COVID is a spectrum and long COVID is only one end of that,” Dr Duncan says.
“It’s never been just a cold. The more times you’re infected, the higher your cardiovascular risk, neurological, and endocrine risk. These can all result in life-altering conditions.
“Some may have underlying silent organ damage, which is asymptomatic, meaning people are not aware of it. It needs more research but it’s very concerning.”
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A UK biobank study found increased risk of cardiovascular death up to a year-and-a-half after getting COVID in unvaccinated people. Others, including data pooled by scientists in Taiwan, show far greater COVID mortality in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
One piece of research suggested babies born to COVID-positive, unvaccinated mothers had a 20.3% risk of neurodevelopmental delay by age, compared to 5.9% of babies whose mothers did not catch COVID while pregnant.
Given emerging research the virus may carry cardiovascular risks for children, citing NHS guidance that children can go back to school three days after getting COVID, Dr Duncan adds: “We have published data showing it takes around seven days for 75% of children, and 10 days for 90% of children to become non-infectious.
“So we have largely chosen to ignore the impact of COVID on our kids and I think that’s a really bad decision.”
How many people are dying with COVID?
Last year excess deaths (how many more deaths occur than are expected) were still higher than the five-year average, but down on 2022 – from more than 30,000 in 2022 to nearly 27,000 in 2023.
COVID-related deaths almost halved from 32,300 in 2022 to 16,600 in 2023. But they still made up almost two-thirds (62%) of excess deaths last year.
Many argue that NHS backlogs are contributing to excess death numbers, and pressures are evident across all areas of services.
According to the latest data from November, 6.4 million patients were on the waiting list for treatment in England, 42% of whom were still waiting beyond the 18-week target.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine attributed more than 23,000 excess deaths in England in 2022 to long waits in emergency departments – where the latest figures show nearly half (46%) are still waiting far longer than the four-hour target to be seen.
Prof Griffin says: “Excess mortality has got less attributable to COVID, but it’s still a problem.
“COVID did have a huge impact on NHS capacity to deal with the backlog, but we haven’t had those widespread restrictions for several years now, yet the NHS has been unable to catch up again and the year-long added pressure from COVID hospitalisations remains.”
Prof Griffin says that as the years go by, one would expect COVID-related deaths to creep down, but not enough is being done to prevent COVID fatalities.
He adds: “We try and bring down excess deaths from non-communicable diseases like cancer and obesity, but we don’t seem to do it very well for infectious disease, even though that’s something we can do a lot more about.”
Dr Duncan says that we “urgently need multi-layered public health protections”, including seasonal vaccines and ventilation systems for cleaner indoor air to “stop people continuously re-infected with constantly evolving new variants”.
She adds that “already licenced medications” could help people with long-term COVID complications but the government needs to fund them.
What has COVID taught us?
Mr Fell says that as a nation we went into the pandemic in a poor state of health, with “deep inequalities” between ethnic and socioeconomic groups.
“The pandemic reminded us that inequalities in health outcomes are very real and matter enormously,” he says.
“There was more infection in some populations because of underlying health differences, but also things like occupational exposure and overcrowded housing in terms of chains of transmission.”
In those aged 65 and over, Alzheimer’s disease was the most common pre-existing health condition in people who died with COVID. Diabetes was the most common for those under 65.
Although COVID is still a factor driving excess deaths, Mr Fell highlights the mortality rate for age-old public health concerns like smoking, which according to the NHS, causes around 76,000 deaths a year in the UK.
“We still have all the other pandemics of death and illness day in day, out,” he adds. “We need to put as much effort into some of those things as we did in how we responded to COVID.”
From improved ventilation in schools and hospitals to investment in more antiviral drugs and vaccines, Prof Griffin adds: “If you think about the trillions of pounds that have been destroyed by COVID globally, surely the investment of however many million is worthwhile for this and future pandemics.”
Government guidance states that, based on evidence, the vaccine programme changed in 2023 to target higher-risk groups, and that vaccinating children outside of those groups is not recommended.
It also says that data at the end of 2022 suggested almost all older children and adults had coronavirus antibodies from either vaccines or infection.
Sky News has contacted the Department of Health and NHS England for comment.
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
Flawed data has been used repeatedly to dismiss claims about “Asian grooming gangs”, Baroness Louise Casey has said in a new report, as she called for a new national inquiry.
The government has accepted her recommendations to introduce compulsory collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in grooming cases, and for a review of police records to launch new criminal investigations into historic child sexual exploitation cases.
Politics latest: Yvette Cooper reveals details of grooming gangs report
Baroness Louise Casey carried out the review. Pic: PA
The crossbench peer has produced an audit of sexual abuse carried out by grooming gangs in England and Wales, after she was asked by the prime minister to review new and existing data, including the ethnicity and demographics of these gangs.
In her report, she has warned authorities that children need to be seen “as children” and called for a tightening of the laws around the age of consent so that any penetrative sexual activity with a child under 16 is classified as rape. This is “to reduce uncertainty which adults can exploit to avoid or reduce the punishments that should be imposed for their crimes”, she added.
Baroness Casey said: “Despite the age of consent being 16, we have found too many examples of child sexual exploitation criminal cases being dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges where a 13 to 15-year-old had been ‘in love with’ or ‘had consented to’ sex with the perpetrator.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The peer has called for a nationwide probe into the exploitation of children by gangs of men.
She has not recommended another over-arching inquiry of the kind conducted by Professor Alexis Jay, and suggests the national probe should be time-limited.
The national inquiry will direct local investigations and hold institutions to account for past failures.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the inquiry’s “purpose is to challenge what the audit describes as continued denial, resistance and legal wrangling among local agencies”.
On the issue of ethnicity, Baroness Casey said police data was not sufficient to draw conclusions as it had been “shied away from”, and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators.
‘Flawed data’
However, having examined local data in three police force areas, she found “disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation, as well as in the significant number of perpetrators of Asian ethnicity identified in local reviews and high-profile child sexual exploitation prosecutions across the country, to at least warrant further examination”.
She added: “Despite reviews, reports and inquiries raising questions about men from Asian or Pakistani backgrounds grooming and sexually exploiting young white girls, the system has consistently failed to fully acknowledge this or collect accurate data so it can be examined effectively.
“Instead, flawed data is used repeatedly to dismiss claims about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ as sensationalised, biased or untrue.
“This does a disservice to victims and indeed all law-abiding people in Asian communities and plays into the hands of those who want to exploit it to sow division.”
Read more:
Officials tried to cover up grooming scandal, says Cummings
Why many victims welcome national inquiry into grooming gangs
Grooming gangs scandal timeline
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From January: Grooming gangs: What happened?
The baroness hit out at the failure of policing data and intelligence for having multiple systems which do not communicate with each other.
She also criticised “an ambivalent attitude to adolescent girls both in society and in the culture of many organisations”, too often judging them as adults.
‘Deep-rooted failure’
Responding to Baroness Casey’s review, Ms Yvette Cooper told the House of Commons: “The findings of her audit are damning.
“At its heart, she identifies a deep-rooted failure to treat children as children. A continued failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, from exploitation, and serious violence.
She added: “Baroness Casey found ‘blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness and even good but misdirected intentions’ all played a part in this collective failure.”
Ms Cooper said she will take immediate action on all 12 recommendations from the report, adding: “We cannot afford more wasted years repeating the same mistakes or shouting at each other across this House rather than delivering real change.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper responded to the report. Pic: PA
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said: “After months of pressure, the prime minister has finally accepted our calls for a full statutory national inquiry into the grooming gangs.
“We must remember that this is not a victory for politicians, especially the ones like the home secretary, who had to be dragged to this position, or the prime minister. This is a victory for the survivors who have been calling for this for years.”
Ms Badenoch added: “The prime minister’s handling of this scandal is an extraordinary failure of leadership. His judgement has once again been found wanting.
“Since he became prime minister, he and the home secretary dismissed calls for an inquiry because they did not want to cause a stir.
“They accused those of us demanding justice for the victims of this scandal as, and I quote, ‘jumping on a far right bandwagon’, a claim the prime minister’s official spokesman restated this weekend – shameful.”
The government has promised new laws to protect children and support victims so they “stop being blamed for the crimes committed against them”.
It is also launching new police operations and a new national inquiry to direct local investigations and hold institutions to account for past failures.
There will also be new ethnicity data and research “so we face up to the facts on exploitation and abuse,” the home secretary said.
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