Coronavirus has hit the UK hard for more than two years, with the country recording millions of cases and tens of thousands of deaths linked to the disease.

How is the disease progressing in the UK?

Now that the government has ended free tests for most people, the number of recorded cases has become a less reliable metric when tracking the spread of coronavirus.

Instead, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes a weekly estimate for the proportion of people in each home nation that have contracted the virus in the past week. This is based on a sample of household surveys and tests and then is extrapolated to give nationwide estimates.

The ONS also publishes weekly death estimates. These give us the daily number of people who have died where Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificate.

The government still publishes daily figures for the number of people in hospital with coronavirus.

How is the vaccine rollout going?

Since UK regulators approved the Pfizer vaccine in December 2020, the UK’s vaccine rollout has picked up pace to a point where most of the population is now fully vaccinated with a booster jab.

However, in all age groups there is a persistent number of people who are not vaccinated. The lowest rates of vaccination are among younger age groups. While they were the last to be invited for vaccinations, there are concerns about vaccine hesitancy among younger people.

How does testing affect cases?

Since not everyone gets a test, the number of people catching coronavirus will always be higher than the number of positive tests. But now that the availability of tests has been reduced, the proportion of cases that will be recorded will also fall.

While the number of daily tests in the UK once stood at more than 2m, it is now a fraction of this number. This is why this tracker page uses the ONS figures for cases.

How many new cases are reinfections?

Initially, reinfections with coronavirus were rare. But as the Omicron variant arrived at the end of 2021, and immunity from previous infections waned, reinfections increased to take up a greater proportion of overall infections.

Find coronavirus cases near you

In the table below, you can find out the number of cases and deaths per 100,000 people in your area, since the start of the pandemic.

This table uses the government numbers for cases, which are based on the number of tests reported by the general public. This government figure is less reliable than the ONS’s estimates, but we are choosing to use it here because it goes down to a more local level than ONS numbers and allows people to compare areas.

About this data

This data comes from the ONS and Public Health England, working with devolved authorities in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Differences in data collection and publishing schedules may lead to temporary inconsistencies.

The Guardian’s tracker now uses case data from the ONS. This is because the government dashboard no longer publishes case data every day of the week, and also because low testing levels now mean recorded case data is unreliable.

For deaths statistics, the ONS, along with its counterparts in Scotland and Northern Ireland, counts all deaths where Covid is on the death certificate. About 90% of these deaths are directly due to Covid, while it is a contributory factor in the remaining deaths. These figures differ from the daily figures the government used to publish every day throughout the pandemic. These figures included any deaths that have occurred within 28 days of a positive test.

Due to the unprecedented and ongoing nature of the coronavirus outbreak, this article is being regularly updated to make sure it reflects the current situation as well as possible. Any significant corrections made to this or previous versions of the article will continue to be footnoted in line with Guardian editorial policy.

Post Source Guardian