Why the official Covid-19 death toll for Atherstone may be coming down as predicted case rates go up

NEW INFECTIONS IN LAST SEVEN DAYS SEE BOROUGH TOTAL TESTING POSITIVE SINCE MARCH JUST SHY OF 350 MARK

AND TOWN AND NORTH WARWICKSHIRE LAND IN 'HOT SPOT' LEAGUE TABLE OF UK'S LARGEST SYMPTOM STUDY

THE OFFICIAL number of deaths attributed to Covid-19 in Atherstone and North Warwickshire is set to be lowered just as the town edged into a 'hot spot' league table while the world passed a grim virus milestone.

Later this week Matt Hancock is reportedly due to adjudicate on a review of the counting method after scientists stumbled on a "flaw" in the data retrieval.

They discovered anyone who tests positive for coronavirus and later dies – whatever the timespan in between – is currently included in the Public Health England numbers.

Now the Health Secretary is understood to be planning to bring the figures in line with Scotland and Northern Ireland which only count a fatality as Covid-related in the first 28 days of a person testing positive.

A new second measure – recording deaths up to 60 days after infection – is likely to run in tandem with the first change.

At this stage it is not known how many of Atherstone and North Warwickshire's 87 deaths (up to the end of June) – out of a county total of 534 and England's total of 41,795 – could be expunged from the records.

The news comes as the borough found itself catapulted into the upper reaches of the wide-ranging Covid-19 Symptom Study of predicted cases and the rates per million.

Yesterday's figure of 1,446 active cases per million triggered a red reading of between 1,000 and 5,000 cases per million in the same banding of towns and cities in the north west in local lockdown.

Today that cases per million reading has dropped to 886 as the actual number of people testing positive for Covid-19 since March is just shy of the 350 mark.

Six new cases have been reported between July 26 and August 2 compared with five in the previous seven-day period.

And the figures – based on pillar one tests carried out in laboratories and pillar two in the wider community – show that Atherstone and North Warwickshire are sixth out of 27 authorities with a rate of 9.2 new cases per 100,000 compared with 7.7 per 100,000 in the previous counting period.

Atherstone and North Warwickshire have now reported 349 Covid-19 cases (up nine in the last fortnight) – at a higher rate per 100,000 population than Birmingham and Coventry.

Its rate is 534.8 per 100,000 compared with neighbouring Nuneaton and Bedworth's 905 cases (up 38 in the same time frame) at 696.8 per 100,000.

Warwickshire's total of confirmed cases stands at 2,622 (up 81 in a fortnight) with a rate per 100,000 of 453.7

The UK total today is 308,184 (up 950 on the previous day) with the current-calculated death toll standing at 46,413.

The 24-hour fatality total increased by 49 people across the UK.

In six weeks the world total has risen from 7.2 million cases to just breaking the 19 million barrier at 19,126,193.

Deaths have risen in the same period from 408,737 to 714,022.