How many people in the UK have had covid to date?

Marty___Mcfly · Jan 6, 2021

Just wondering, if 1 million people have covid right at this minute (based on the ONS survey), how many people have had it in the UK, in total, to date?

We must be getting up to a decent proportion of the population, a year into this. 25%? 50%? more?

cloud · Jan 6, 2021

50% or more would not be a surprise.

There have been a couple of studies among Healthcare workers, suggesting high levels of natural immunity, the implication being they have had exposure already.

https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(20)30781-7/fulltext

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034545?s=09

There are also antibody tests, and I'm tempted to get one as I'm pretty certain I had Covid in March.
I am on the register to volunteer to donate plasma, so they would have a good understanding of how many people have had it.

Marty___Mcfly · Jan 6, 2021

I'm surprised this isn't being talked about. So much focus on how many people vaccinated / how many can we vaccinate. Surely the other key issue is how many have had it already and therefore should have some immunity.

E.g. if 20 million are estimated to have had it that is 20 million we can add to the number of people vaccinated (although there will be overlap). I get these will be estimates but surely a key issue. The way vaccines are talked about fails to acknowledge such a huge number should already have some immunity.

RossyG · Jan 6, 2021

How do you go about getting the antibody test? A friend's wife was invited to and a courier came to collect the test. Do you just have to wait until you're asked?

clapham_gull · Jan 6, 2021

RossyG said:
How do you go about getting the antibody test? A friend's wife was invited to and a courier came to collect the test. Do you just have to wait until you're asked?

Antibody test? You can get one of those down privately. Superdrug were doing them but they are not cheap.

Some people were randomly selected, my mate was.

Edit. Superdrug has relaunched them and they are much more accurate apparently.

https://onlinedoctor.superdrug.com/coronavirus-antibody-test.html

cloud · Jan 6, 2021

BUPA and Nuffield do antibody tests for £65 https://www.bupa.co.uk/health/payg/covid-testing

Poojah · Jan 6, 2021

cloud said:
50% or more would not be a surprise.

There have been a couple of studies among Healthcare workers, suggesting high levels of natural immunity, the implication being they have had exposure already.

https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(20)30781-7/fulltext

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034545?s=09

There are also antibody tests, and I'm tempted to get one as I'm pretty certain I had Covid in March.
I am on the register to volunteer to donate plasma, so they would have a good understanding of how many people have had it.

I think 50% is rather overcooked. Let’s call it 30 million people for the sake of the argument, if we end up with a death toll of 100,000 from everyone who’s had it to date that would equate to a case mortality rate of 0.3% which seems at odds with most data on that front. I imagine somewhere between 15% and 20% would be more realistic.

Coldeanseagull · Jan 8, 2021

My wife and I have just tested positive. What a kick in the dangly bits

RossyG · Jan 8, 2021

Coldeanseagull said:
My wife and I have just tested positive. What a kick in the dangly bits

Hope you both get well soon.

crodonilson · Jan 8, 2021

If it was 50% noway we would see the numbers we are seeing today , I'd guess around 10%. We're an incredibly long way from here immunity and given the mutations I think by the time we got to hers immunity we'd be back to square one anyway.

Weststander · Jan 8, 2021

Just now 3m people in the UK have tested positive for coronavirus since the pandemic started.

An ONS survey in December found that those stats only account for 38% of cases, in the main because half of people with the virus have no symptoms at all.

So 3,000,000 x 100/38 = 8m.

This makes sense as the majority of folk have played by the rules, especially the elderly and the UK has ordered 10m’s of vaccines. Would they have bought that number if 10m’s already had herd immunity?

dsr-burnley · Jan 9, 2021

Weststander said:
Just now 3m people in the UK have tested positive for coronavirus since the pandemic started.

An ONS survey in December found that those stats only account for 38% of cases, in the main because half of people with the virus have no symptoms at all.

So 3,000,000 x 100/38 = 8m.

This makes sense as the majority of folk have played by the rules, especially the elderly and the UK has ordered 10m’s of vaccines. Would they have bought that number if 10m’s already had herd immunity?

I suspect it's cheaper to vaccinate people than it is to test them for immunity and then decide whether to vaccinate them.

Weststander · Jan 9, 2021

dsr-burnley said:
I suspect it's cheaper to vaccinate people than it is to test them for immunity and then decide whether to vaccinate them.

I agree, and safer.

But guesses that 25m have had coronavirus must be way off the mark. That would mean only a tiny proportion needed hospital care or died .... as an aside, fitting the anti vaxers narrative.

Marty___Mcfly · Jan 9, 2021

If 1.1 million people have it right at this moment, and it’s been around for a year, then we must be up to 10’s of millions.

If the ONS survey projections are in any way accurate.

Marty___Mcfly · Jan 10, 2021

Ok so this is Neil Ferguson in today’s Times.

His best guess- 30% of people have had it in London, 20% in the Northwest. 10-15% of the population overall. This is guesswork but would mean up to 10 million people with some sort of immunity already.

NF also says in his option having had it offers similar protection to having a vaccine.

With infection rates as they are at the moment, maybe we will have another 10 million before it reduces significantly.

So by March we could have 20 million with immunity from having had it, and 20 million more vaccinated (with some overlap). Which is about 60% of the population. In immunity terms this sounds very good and would surely see the hospital numbers and deaths fall dramatically.

This is why I feel that ‘natural immunity’ side of the story deserves more coverage. If we want to get to a point of less restrictions by March the natural immunity factor could be as big a contributor as the vaccines are.

Blue Valkyrie · Jan 10, 2021

Marty___Mcfly said:
Ok so this is Neil Ferguson in today’s Times.

His best guess- 30% of people have had it in London, 20% in the Northwest. 10-15% of the population overall. This is guesswork but would mean up to 10 million people with some sort of immunity already.

NF also says in his option having had it offers similar protection to having a vaccine.

With infection rates as they are at the moment, maybe we will have another 10 million before it reduces significantly.

So by March we could have 20 million with immunity from having had it, and 20 million more vaccinated (with some overlap). Which is about 60% of the population. In immunity terms this sounds very good and would surely see the hospital numbers and deaths fall dramatically.

This is why I feel that ‘natural immunity’ side of the story deserves more coverage. If we want to get to a point of less restrictions by March the natural immunity factor could be as big a contributor as the vaccines are.

The overlap you mention would be ~6.6 million which reduces your 60% to 50%.

Bozza · Jan 10, 2021

Pleased that already over the course of this thread we've reached a more realistic number. My estimate, when reading the first post in this thread, was at the lower end of 10-15% across the nation as a whole.

Marty___Mcfly said:
This is why I feel that ‘natural immunity’ side of the story deserves more coverage. If we want to get to a point of less restrictions by March the natural immunity factor could be as big a contributor as the vaccines are.

I'm really not sure what you're suggesting here.

Extrapolating current death rates from the time these people likely became infected, tested positive and were subsequently hospitalised, and looking at infection and hospitalisation rates from the last week or so, suggests to me we could very soon be in the realms of 2,000+ newly reported deaths per day. The data is already suggesting that more people are now dying than previously which could be an impact of the burden on the NHS currently and that care is starting to suffer.

For "natural immunity" to be a factor by March, you are talking tens of millions of people becoming infected in a very short timeframe which would lead to an absolutely catastrophic loss of life even if the NHS could care for those that needed it, and it wouldn't be able to.

I'm sure you're not suggesting that but, as I started, I'm not sure what you are suggesting.

Vaccines are our way out of this.

darkwolf666 · Jan 10, 2021

Marty___Mcfly said:
Ok so this is Neil Ferguson in today’s Times.

His best guess- 30% of people have had it in London, 20% in the Northwest. 10-15% of the population overall. This is guesswork but would mean up to 10 million people with some sort of immunity already.

NF also says in his option having had it offers similar protection to having a vaccine.

With infection rates as they are at the moment, maybe we will have another 10 million before it reduces significantly.

So by March we could have 20 million with immunity from having had it, and 20 million more vaccinated (with some overlap). Which is about 60% of the population. In immunity terms this sounds very good and would surely see the hospital numbers and deaths fall dramatically.

This is why I feel that ‘natural immunity’ side of the story deserves more coverage. If we want to get to a point of less restrictions by March the natural immunity factor could be as big a contributor as the vaccines are.

Lots of maybes and possibles in your post and Ferguson’s clips, but **** all on the number of deaths caused by this approach!

Edit - in the post above this, Bozza put the argument a little more precisely and less emotionally than my outburst, but man people with your attitude make me so angry, effectively putting people to death in a rush to get back to “normality”.

Marty___Mcfly · Jan 10, 2021

I’m just suggesting it is a major factor that doesn’t get much coverage in the press. I totally appreciate all the negative impacts of people catching it. Increased immunity in the population is probably the only positive.

However it happens I hope hospitalisation and deaths start to reduce as soon as possible.

RossyG · Jan 10, 2021

darkwolf666 said:
Lots of maybes and possibles in your post and Ferguson’s clips, but **** all on the number of deaths caused by this approach!

It’s not an approach, it’s a naturally occurring and welcome side effect of our immune systems in a pandemic and one that needs to be taken into consideration.

But mention herd immunity in public and you just get accused of being Dr Mengele.

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How many people in the UK have had covid to date?

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