COVID Christmas 2021

OK, so assuming that each person only tested once, and considering all new cases in the ten days up to and including 27th Dec, it looks like it was 1 in 65 people in the UK (1 in 60 in England).

According to this article: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/omicron-thrives-airways-not-lungs-new-data-asymptomatic-cases-2021-12-15/, approx 40% of cases are asymptomatic, and according to this data, approx 10% of positive tests come from asymptomatic people. The data seems to be incomplete, as it shows only about 40% came from symptomatic people, so I’ll extrapolate - 20% or so of positive tests came from people with no symptoms

Therefore, if 20% of people tested are asymptomatic, but 40% of the infected are asymptomatic, we can estimate approximately for each one asymptomatic person tested, there is one asymptomatic person in the community who is not tested.

Adding these ‘asymptomatic untested’ brings the number up to 1/55 in the UK, and 1/50 in England. Obviously this does not include people who are symptomatic but not tested (or have only taken a lateral flow, not a PCR), so this estimate is still likely underestimating how many people were actually infected.