‘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.
Four teenagers and a 45-year-old man have been found guilty of murdering two boys, aged 15 and 16, who were attacked with machetes in a case of mistaken identity.
The convictions follow a five-week trial at Bristol Crown Court.
The jury heard how Max Dixon and Mason Rist were killed in a case of mistaken identity on 27 January, after being wrongly identified as being responsible for a house attack in the Hartcliffe area of the city earlier that evening.
Antony Snook, 45, Riley Tolliver, 18, and three boys aged 15, 16 and 17 were all on trial each charged with two counts of murder.
Mason Rist and Max Dixon were stabbed in January this year. Pic: Family handout via Avon and Somerset Police/PA
As the jury foreman returned the guilty verdicts, none of the defendants showed any reaction from the dock, as they sat impassively and stared straight ahead.
The fatal stabbings in Knowle West lasted just 33 seconds – with both boys suffering what the court heard were “unsurvivable” injuries and “instant severe blood loss”.
Both died in hospital in the early hours of 28 January.
CCTV shown in court allegedly shows the 16 and 17-year-olds minutes after the attack with a large knife
Detective Superintendent Gary Haskins, the case’s senior investigating officer from Avon and Somerset Police, told Sky News that Max and Mason had nothing to do with the house attack.
“Those boys were not known to their attackers, they were best friends, two beautiful children just going about their lives and attacked for no reason whatsoever,” he said.
Detective Superintendent Gary Haskins
Much of the prosecution’s case was based on CCTV and doorbell videos, including a camera on Mason’s own house which captured footage of the knife attack against him.
The pair were seen leaving Mason’s home at around 11.15pm and were going for a pizza.
Prosecutor Ray Tully KC told the jury that the boys were set upon by the group who had been travelling in Snook’s Audi Q2.
He said the group were “out for revenge”, “acting as a pack” to hunt down those responsible and “tooled up” with fearsome weapons.
After the attackers fled, Max and Mason were left bleeding in the street.
The investigation involved more than 230 police officers and staff – with thousands of pieces of evidence analysed.
CCTV of the actual attack was shown in court previously
Five people – Antony Snook, 45, Riley Tolliver, 18, and three boys aged 15, 16 and 17 – were all accused of the murders
Hundreds mourned victims at school
The teenage victims were in year 11 together at the Oasis Academy John Williams secondary school and were preparing to sit their GCSEs this summer.
The school’s headteacher Victoria Boomer-Clark told Sky News that everyone rallied to support fellow pupils and staff.
She said: “After the boys were tragically murdered, for us first and foremost we were thinking about the families and how they were coping with the absolute tragedy and shock of that.
“I can remember trying to prepare for that Monday morning and my memories now are how exceptionally strong our young people are and how we have a real sense of community.
“Unbeknownst to us the young people had arranged to hold a vigil on the playground during breaktime on that first Monday. We had hundreds of young people and staff coming together in silence.”
Ms Boomer-Clark said the boys would have attended school prom this summer.
“We had a wall that was lit up in red for Mason and Liverpool football club and a wall in blue for Park Knowle Football Club,” she said. “The year group came together and supported each other through it.”
Oasis Academy John Williams headteacher Victoria Boomer-Clark
Detective had never seen ‘horrific’ weapons before
The murders came before a new law was introduced banning ownership of zombie-style knives and machetes.
Detective Superintendent Gary Haskins said: “The weapons used in the attack on Mason and Max were simply horrific.
“I’ve been a detective for many, many years and I’ve had the misfortune of investigating some serious offences.
“In all my service I’ve not seen a weapon like the one we saw used on those two boys.
“There is no place for a weapon of that type in society for any reason whatsoever.”
One of the knives recovered
One of the knives recovered
The detective praised the boy’s families, who attended court throughout the trial.
He added: “I’m humbled by the families involved in this investigation. They’ve been at court every day, they’ve seen things at court that no parent should ever be exposed to. They saw the attacks on their children, but they maintain their dignity, their courage and their love for their family.
“How can you replace what they’ve lost? They’ve lost two beautiful sons, and I can only hope that the verdicts will bring some form of closure. It will never close completely.”
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Snook will be sentenced on 19 November at Bristol Crown Court.
The other four defendants will be sentenced on 16 December following the preparation of pre-sentence reports.
Police are continuing to investigate the Hartcliffe house attack and search for those responsible.
The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the quarter.
The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.
Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.
And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.
Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Improving economic growth is at the heart of everything I am seeking to achieve, which is why I am not satisfied with these numbers.
“At my budget, I took the difficult choices to fix the foundations and stabilise our public finances.
“Now we are going to deliver growth through investment and reform to create more jobs and more money in people’s pockets, get the NHS back on its feet, rebuild Britain and secure our borders in a decade of national renewal,” Ms Reeves added.
The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.
The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.
The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.
It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.
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The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.
The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.
Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.
The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.
“If you are a member of something, it means you’ve accepted membership. Anything with ‘ship’ on the end, it’s giving you a clue: it’s telling you that’s maritime law. That means you’ve entered into a contract.”
This isn’t your standard legal argument and it is becoming clear that I am dealing with an unusual way of looking at the world.
I’m in the library of a hotel in Leicestershire, a wood-panelled room with warm lighting, and Pete Stone, better known as Sovereign Pete, is explaining how “the system” works. Mr Stone is in his mid-50, bald with a goatee beard and wearing, as he always does for public appearances, a black T-shirt and black jeans.
With us are six other people, mainly dressed in neat jumpers. They’re members of the Sovereign Project (SP), an organisation Mr Stone founded in 2020, which, he says, now has more than 20,000 paying members.
As arcane as this may sound, it represents a worldview that is becoming more influential – and causing problems for authorities. Loosely, they’re defined as “sovereign citizens” or “freemen on the land”.
The Sovereign Project claims to now have 20,000 paying members in the UK
Their fundamental point is that nobody is required to obey laws they have not specifically consented to – especially when it comes to tax. They have hundreds of thousands of followers in the UK across platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Telegram.
Increasingly, they are coming into conflict with governments and the law. Sovereign citizens have ended up in the High Court in recent months, challenging the legalities of tax bills and losing on both occasions.
In October, four people were sentenced to prison for the attempted kidnapping of an Essex coroner, who they saw as acting unlawfully. The self-appointed “sheriffs” attempted to force entry to the court, one of them demanding: “You guys have been practising fraud!”
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Moment ‘cult’ tries to kidnap coroner
The Sovereign Project is not connected to any of those cases, nor does it promote any sort of political action, let alone violence.
Instead, they are focused on issues like questioning the obligation to pay taxes, as Mr Stone explains, referencing the feudal system that operated in the Middle Ages.
“Do you know about the feudal system when people were slaves and were forced to pay tax?” he asks.
“Now, unless the feudal system still operates today, and we still have serfs and slaves, then the only way that you can pay taxes is to have a contract, you have to agree to it and consent to it.”
Another member, Karl Deans, a 43-year-old property developer who runs the SP’s social media, says: “We’re not here to dodge tax.”
Local government tends to be a target beyond just demands for tax. Mr Stone speaks of “council employee crimes”.
I ask whether, considering the attempted kidnapping in Essex, there is a danger that people will listen to these accusations of crimes by councils and act on them.
“Well that’s proved,” Mr Stone says. “We only deal with facts.”
Sky’s Tom Cheshire (second left) meets ‘Sovereign Pete’ (left) and other groups members
Evidence suggests this approach is becoming an issue for councils across the UK, as people search online for ways to avoid paying tax.
Sky News analysis shows that out of 374 council websites covering Great Britain, at least 172 (46%) have pages responding to sovereign citizen arguments around avoiding paying council tax. They point out that liability for council tax is not dependent on consent, or a contract, and instead relies on the Local Government Finance Act 1992, voted on by Parliament.
But the Sovereign Project’s worldview extends beyond council tax. It is deeply anti-establishment, at times conspiratorial. Stone suggests the summer riots may have been organised by the government.
“The sovereign fraternity operates above all of this,” he says. “We look down at the world like a chessboard. We see what’s going on.”
He explains that, really, the UK government isn’t actually in control: there is a shadow government above them.
“These are the people who control government,” he explains.
“A lot of people say this could be the crown council of 13, this could be a series of Italian families.”
Violence broke out in numerous towns and cities in August. Pic: PA
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Professor Christine Sarteschi, an expert in sovereign citizens at Chatham University, Pittsburgh, says she’s worried about the threat sovereign citizens may pose to the rule of law, especially in the US where guns are readily available.
“The movement is growing and that’s evidenced by seeing it in different countries and hearing about different cases. The concern is that they will become emboldened and commit acts of violence,” she says.
“Because sovereigns truly believe in their ideas and if they feel very aggrieved by, you know, the government or whomever they think is oppressing them or controlling them… they can become emotionally involved.
“That emotional involvement sometimes leads to violence in some cases, or the belief that they have the power to attempt to overthrow a government in some capacity.”
Professor Christine Sarteschi
Much of this seems to be based on an underlying and familiar frustration at the state of this country and of the world.
Mr Stone echoes some of the characteristic arguments also made by the right, that there is “two-tier policing”, that refugees arriving in the UK are “young men of fighting age”, that the government is using “forced immigration to destroy the country”.
Another SP member, retired investment banker David Hopgood, 61, says: “I firmly believe it is the true Englishman – and woman – of this country – that has the power to unlock this madness that’s happening in the West.
“We’ve got the Magna Carta – all these checks and balances. We just need to pack up, go down to Parliament and say: It’s time to dismiss you. You’re not fit for purpose.”
The members of the Sovereign Project are unfailingly patient and polite in explaining their understanding of the world.
But there is no doubt they hold a deeply radical view, one that is apparently growing in popularity.
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