Coronavirus Infection Rates Double in Parts of England

Areas with large student populations, such as Nottingham, Sheffield and Exeter, have seen sharp rises in infection rates over the last week.

The weekly rate of COVID-19 cases has seen a massive increase in areas across England after nearly 16,000 unreported cases were added to the total.

A failure in IT systems has caused almost 16,000 coronavirus cases to go missing from official data in England. The infected individuals themselves were notified, and would hopefully have isolated to prevent spreading the infection, but the glitch meant none of their contacts were also notified at the time. The worry is that this may mean thousands of contacts of people who were not recorded on the government’s list could have spread the virus in the last week.

An analysis carried out by health officials suggests this could mean at least 34,000 contacts were left in the dark about having been exposed to the virus- those missed contacts, who tracers are now urgently trying to reach, may have been unknowingly spreading the virus on to others for days.

Universities across the UK report outbreaks

Some of the biggest increases in infection rates were seen in areas with large student populations, such as Nottingham, Sheffield and Exeter. The analysis shows a particularly sharp rise in Nottingham, where the infection rate more than quadrupled from 68.6 to 305.1 cases per 100,000 people, with 1,010 new cases recorded in the week.

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