Covid figures

[chaggle]

Just been announced at the Covid news conference that 2% of the population is infected with Covid.

Also announced 1,000,000 people in England have it - population roughly 50,000,000 - which confirms that 2%.

So that's 2000 per 100,000 isn't it?

So why are the regionally quoted 'numbers per 100,000' so low?

Ours is around 300, apparently some in London and the south east are around 900.

Nowhere is anywhere near 2000.

What have I misunderstood?

[Matt]

Cases vs infected maybe? I seem to have half read a twitter thread on the difference between the two stats but can't find it now.

[Tony.Williams]

Hey, what happened to my response? I posted it yesterday...

I replied that the daily figures for those infected were presumably from actual testing (which covers only a small percentage of the overall population), whereas the overall figure of 2% would be an extrapolation from the tests to cover the whole population.

[chaggle]

Don't know where your post went Tony - not guilty.

If I understand correctly, the testing figures produce a cases-per-100,000 figure.

The figure will be the same however many people are tested. Won't they?

[chaggle]

OK - just seen on our local news that the figures quoted are NEW infections.

The 2% or 1 in 50 figure was total currently infected.

I note that the current cases figure is 3 million so that's about 1 in 22-ish.