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Edinburgh expert warns Covid cases are likely to be 'substantially higher' than reported

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorPA Media
Published date18 June 2022
Publication titleEdinburghLive (Scotland)
Professor Rowland Kao said the lack of surveillance monitoring meant infection levels were unknown. This comes just days after Professor Linda Bauld warned the country is experiencing a 'new wave' of the virus

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has estimated that one in 30 people in Scotland had coronavirus in the week ending June 10 - the second week in a row that infection numbers have risen.

Scotland also has higher numbers of cases than the other nations of the UK, with infection levels in England put at one in 50 people by the ONS, while in Wales and Northern Ireland one in 45 were estimated to have the disease.

And Professor Kao, an epidemiology expert from Edinburgh University, said that infection levels were "probably" higher than the one in 30 that the ONS has estimated.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme, Prof Kao said: "One of the things is that we actually don't know how much Covid is out there, because we no longer do surveillance for it.

"So that one in 30 is probably substantially higher."

He said rising Covid numbers were linked to the emergence of a new variant "which is slightly different from the Omicron variant which was spreading earlier this year, which is now becoming more prevalent".

This version of the virus is now the predominant one in the US, he added, saying: "We think it is probably more transmissible than the previous variant, so that is one of the big things."

But he also said governments were "doing very, very little to control the virus right now", which could also be contributing to the...

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