Guidance

Coronavirus cases in the UK: daily updated statistics

The latest number of coronavirus (COVID-19) tests, cases and deaths in the UK.

Published 24 January 2020
Last updated 4 August 2020 — see all updates
From:
Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England

Dashboard of coronavirus cases and deaths

The coronavirus dashboard is updated daily. It shows the number of cases and deaths in the UK, broken down by region and local authority area.

You can download the data in csv format.

Number of coronavirus deaths and cases

Deaths

On 17 July, the Secretary of State asked Public Health England (PHE) to urgently review the way daily death statistics are currently reported. We’re pausing the publication of the daily figure while this review takes place.

Daily Cumulative
Deaths in all settings not available not available

Coronavirus deaths and cases give a sense of the spread of the epidemic. Deaths are counted where a lab-confirmed positive coronavirus test result is reported in any setting. This means that not all deaths reported here are caused by coronavirus. Further information is available in the ‘Notes on deaths figures’ section.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes further statistics of deaths with breakdowns. This covers death registrations where coronavirus was mentioned, so will include deaths where a person did not have a lab-confirmed positive result.

Positive cases

As of 9am on 3 August, 305,623 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the UK (pillar 1 and 2, see descriptions below).

Daily Cumulative
Positive cases (pillars 1 and 2) 938 305,623

Cases are reported when lab tests are completed and confirmed positive. There are more cases in the UK than are confirmed, for example where people are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms and do not get tested.

Number of tests

Definition of testing pillars

  • pillar 1: swab (antigen) testing in Public Health England (PHE) labs and NHS hospitals for those with a clinical need and health and care workers
  • pillar 2: swab (antigen) testing for the wider population
  • pillar 3: serology testing to show if people have antibodies from having had coronavirus
  • pillar 4: blood and swab testing for national surveillance supported by PHE, ONS, and research, academic, and scientific partners to learn more about the prevalence and spread of the virus and for other testing research purposes, such as the accuracy and ease of use of home testing

Overall volume of tests

As of 9am on 3 August, there have been 16,717,684 tests (either processed or sent out) across all 4 pillars in the UK. Of these, 12,250,937 tests were processed in total.

Daily Cumulative
All tests made available (pillars 1 to 4) 215,761 16,717,684
All tests processed (pillars 1 to 4) 163,786 12,250,937

The government’s testing strategy sets out a challenge to massively increase testing capacity over a range of areas and for a range of purposes. The total number of tests has been used as a summary measure of the volume of tests that have been made available (‘all tests made available’). Within this summary measure, different tests are counted at different points.

Tests that remain within the control of the central programme are counted when they are processed in a lab (tests processed). Any tests that go outside the control of the central programme are counted when they leave the programme (tests sent out). These include tests that are mailed out to people at home and tests that are sent out through satellite sites.

‘All tests processed’ counts tests that have remained within the control of the programme (and were counted at the time of when it was processed in labs) and those that have been sent out and subsequently returned to be processed in a lab. This is a useful additional measure as it shows how many tests we have received results for. The publication of this measure is also in line with the UK Statistics Authority recommendations.

‘People tested’ figures are published as part of the weekly Test and Trace publication. Many people are retested multiple times for valid reasons, such as regular testing of health and care workers over several months.

The ‘people tested’ measure was initially used to avoid counting one person tested several times in a short space of time. It no longer usefully reflects the volume of tests carried out as, for example, a healthcare worker receiving their second, third or fourth test since the start of the pandemic would not be counted as they have been tested once before. Therefore, the people tested figure will be published on a weekly basis within the NHS Test and Trace statistics rather than daily.

Testing capacity

In early May, the government set out another challenge to increase testing capacity to 200,000 tests per day by the end of May. This target was met on 29 May and continues to be met daily.

Overall lab capacity is important to ensure the programme is able to meet potential demand and deliver large numbers of tests.

At 9am on 2 August, testing capacity was 338,413 in the UK.

Pillar 1 Pillar 2 Pillar 3 Pillar 4 Total
Lab capacity 81,313 127,000 120,000 10,100 338,413

Coronavirus tests are processed in several separate labs. Projected lab capacity is an estimate of each lab’s constrained capacity each day based on the staff, chemical reagents and other resources it has available. These estimates are made locally by the labs themselves.

Further information on the methodology of how capacity is reported is available in the testing methodology.

Antigen tests (pillars 1 and 2) (UK)

These are swab tests targeted at those who are sick and with symptoms. They look for the presence of the virus itself.

All tests in pillar 1 are counted when they are processed by a lab. Tests in pillar 2 are administered in 2 different ways:

  • counted when they are sent out
  • counted when they are processed by a lab

Not all tests sent out will be returned to the labs.

Daily Cumulative
Pillar 1 tests processed 44,562 4,463,488
Pillar 2 tests processed 69,757 4,017,760
Pillar 2 tests sent out 88,026 5,559,275

Tests that are counted at the time of dispatch are typically returned to the labs a few days later. Therefore, the daily figures of tests processed are not directly comparable to tests dispatched for that day.

Positive results are often used as an indicator of the progress of the pandemic. Positive test results are an international standard and are reported to the World Health Organization. However, it is important to look at a wider range of indicators, as the proportion of people testing positive in this section is heavily influenced by the number of tests being done and who is being tested.

PHE’s surveillance report and the ONS coronavirus Infection Survey offer detailed information on the incidence and prevalence of the virus.

Daily Cumulative
Pillar 1 positive cases 106 201,544
Pillar 2 positive cases 832 104,079
Total positive cases 938 305,623

Results from pillars 1 and 2 will drive the NHS Test and Trace programme and devolved test and trace systems.

Antibody tests (pillar 3) (England)

These tests are designed to identify if a person has antibodies in their system, which means that they have had coronavirus at some point, but they do not test for the presence of the virus itself (as in pillars 1 and 2).

Tests in pillar 3 are counted when they are processed by a lab.

Daily Cumulative
Pillar 3 tests processed 1,201 1,406,870

This pillar does not report people tested or positive cases because tests are anonymised before being sent to a lab. Positive cases for pillar 3 are different to pillars 1 and 2 so should not be classed together.

Surveillance tests (pillar 4) (UK)

Testing in this pillar is designed to understand the spread of the virus and the reliability of different testing methods.

As in pillar 2, pillar 4 tests are counted either when they are sent out or when they are processed by a lab.

This includes antigen and antibody testing. People tested and positive cases are not reported due to this covering a variety of different studies that do not currently allow to deduplicate individuals.

Daily Cumulative
Pillar 4 tests processed 7,129 358,169
Pillar 4 tests sent out 5,086 912,122

See the results of the ongoing ONS study, which gives the best estimates of what proportion of the population has the virus now.

Time series documents

3 August notes

Due to IT issues, today’s cumulative number of positive cases for Scotland has been revised downwards by 10.

The total number of tests made available has been revised since yesterday’s total after the following changes to the historical data:

  • 1,226 tests added to the pillar 1 cumulative total
  • 1,365 tests added to the pillar 2 cumulative total
  • one test added to the pillar 3 cumulative total
  • 59 tests added to the pillar 4 cumulative total

The daily tests made available reported today have been added to this revised total rather than the total reported yesterday, so the cumulative total today is 2,651 higher than if you added the daily tests to yesterday’s total. The pillar 4 revision is due to improvements in the data collection methodology for one study.

The total number of all tests processed has been revised since yesterday’s total after the following changes to the historical data:

  • 1,226 tests added to the pillar 1 cumulative total
  • one test added to the pillar 3 cumulative total
  • 10,657 tests added to the pillar 4 cumulative total

The daily ‘all tests processed’ reported today have been added to this revised total rather than the total reported yesterday, so the cumulative total today is 11,884 higher than if you added the daily tests to yesterday’s total. This is mainly due to pillar 4 improvements in the data collection methodology for one study.

It’s likely that pillar 2 numbers for 3 August are over-reported. The figures will be revised as soon as possible. This affects the ‘tests made available’ totals.

Further information:

Correspondence with the Office for Statistics Regulation about testing data

The Chair of the Office for Statistics Regulation wrote to us about presentation of statistics about testing.

Read the letter from the regulator on 11 May

Read our response, published on 27 May

Read the letter from the regulator on 2 June

Read our response, published on 12 June

General notes

Data on UK tests, positive cases and deaths is updated on this page daily at 2pm or shortly after. The figures for test results and for deaths are compiled from different sources. This is why the figures for deaths are reported from an earlier point in time than the figures for test results.

Daily totals reflect actual counts reported for the previous day. Each day there may be corrections to previous reported figures. This means that previously published daily counts will not necessarily sum to the latest cumulative figure. It also means that today’s cumulative count may not match the previous day’s cumulative count plus today’s daily count.

Notes on deaths figures

From 29 April, figures for deaths include all cases where there is a positive confirmed test for coronavirus. The figures include deaths with lab-confirmed COVID-19 in all settings, not just those in hospital, and this provides us with a single figure on an equivalent basis for the whole of the UK.

These UK figures are compiled from validated data provided by each of the four nations of the UK. Figures from Health Protection Scotland, Public Health Wales and the Public Health Agency (Northern Ireland) have always included tested cases outside hospital. Figures for England from 29 April onwards are provided by Public Health England and draw together several different data sources, including data from NHS England and Improvement, to produce this broader measure.

This approach allows us to compile deaths data on a daily basis using up-to-date figures across all settings. The data includes deaths with lab-confirmed COVID-19 reported as at 5pm the previous day. The amount of time between occurrence of death and reporting in these figures may vary slightly and in some cases could be a few days, so figures at 5pm may not include all deaths for that day.

The PHE method draws on data from 3 data sources and individual records of deaths are included in the figures as soon as they are available in any of these 3 sources.

As announced previously, from 1 June we have stopped publishing a separate count of deaths in hospital as our daily count now provides a count of deaths in all settings. Figures for deaths in hospital in England continue to be published by NHS England.

In addition to these figures, ONS publishes weekly counts of deaths in which coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate. This publication is issued every Tuesday, starting on 31 March 2020. The ONS series includes cases in all settings, and also includes some cases where coronavirus is suspected but no test has taken place. ONS detailed data covers England and Wales only, but from 28 April their publication includes a headline summary of registered deaths in the whole of the UK. Their report each Tuesday covers deaths registered up to 11 days before publication.

Read the joint DHSC and ONS transparency statement about coronavirus deaths figures.

Published 24 January 2020
Last updated 4 August 2020 + show all updates

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