It's primarily an early testing issue. The UK had millions of cases in late March/early April with a testing capacity in the 10k/day range; essentially everyone who got tested was being admitted to hospital, and they were only being admitted if they were at imminent risk. Then from early April you had very wide circulation in care homes, exacerbated by clearing patients out of hospital into them to make room for the expected waves of covid cases. The true infection rate in the UK is variously estimated at 2-10 million, but only c.300k positive tests.
The testing situation has now been fixed, at least in terms of capacity if not entirely access and admin, and we have gone from one of the worst rates of under-diagnosis in the developed world to the point where a significant proportion of the positive tests may now be the tiny percentage of false-positives.
The UK (or rather England; this is a devolved issue) also has an issue with the definition of a COVID death; in order to avoid undercounting, the definition is "anyone who has tested positive and subsequently died". Due to uncertainty about the long-term effects of covid there is no category of "person who has recovered from it" as yet. This is currently being reviewed as it is making the statisticians look silly, because many of those testing positive are very old (cf. problem with care homes) and quite likely to die anyway.
no subject
The true infection rate in the UK is variously estimated at 2-10 million, but only c.300k positive tests.
The testing situation has now been fixed, at least in terms of capacity if not entirely access and admin, and we have gone from one of the worst rates of under-diagnosis in the developed world to the point where a significant proportion of the positive tests may now be the tiny percentage of false-positives.
The UK (or rather England; this is a devolved issue) also has an issue with the definition of a COVID death; in order to avoid undercounting, the definition is "anyone who has tested positive and subsequently died". Due to uncertainty about the long-term effects of covid there is no category of "person who has recovered from it" as yet. This is currently being reviewed as it is making the statisticians look silly, because many of those testing positive are very old (cf. problem with care homes) and quite likely to die anyway.