...Among the lessons learned was the need for better seroprevalence data – tests to show how widespread the infection was. Without them, no sensible estimate could be made of the case-fatality ratio. ..."
Bearing in mind that report is from ten years ago it's surprising that better testing (both quantity and facilities) were not instigated back then, including both antigen and antibody testing, in readiness for when another epidemic came along (such as the current one!).
Testing infrastructure, along with the stockpiling of equipment for emergencies, was not done. This was a political (right wing) decision made alongside all the other cuts made under the ideological Austerity Agenda. We ain't 'alf paying for it now.
Bear in mind that the figures below are from BEFORE coronavirus hit and way before the Peak.
https://theconversation.com/coronav...-in-the-uk-compares-to-the-past-decade-134420
Coronavirus: how the current number of people dying in the UK compares to the past decade
Braced. Peter Byrne/PA Wire
The speed of the global spread of coronavirus
is staggering.
On March 5, Chris Whitty, the UK’s chief medical adviser,
announced the death, in Berkshire, of the first UK patient to have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease associated with the new coronavirus. That patient had contracted the virus within the UK.
Exactly eight weeks earlier, on
January 9, in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the first such death worldwide had occurred. At the time it
was reported that there was no evidence the virus could spread between humans. That was quickly proved wrong. The virus spread around the world and the rise in deaths is
now slowest in those countries it reached first.
In England and Wales, the very latest data has just been published on the number of all deaths registered in the
week ending March 13 – which was 11,019 people. This was some 186 fewer than in that same week over the course of the last five years.
It’s worth looking in detail at the period just before the pandemic reached the UK to understand what huge variations in mortality occurred recently before anyone died due to COVID-19. That’s because it’s useful to know how bad the situation already was in late January, February and early March before the crisis fully hit as it is expected to – and how often the numbers dying at this time of year have risen above what the NHS and adult social services have (and have not) been able to cope with in very recent years.
Fewer deaths than average
In the 56 days from January 11 to March 6, the total number of people who died in England and Wales was
recorded as being 90,940, only one of whom was known to have tested positive for COVID-19. Others who died may possibly have had the disease, but not been tested for it. However, it’s unlikely that the virus was widespread in England and Wales in the first few months of 2020. That’s because the 90,940 deaths was
5,023 people lower than the average in the same eight-week period over the previous five years, which was 95,963.
One obvious reason why fewer people died in early 2020 was because the previous five years had been extraordinarily bad, as the graph below shows by comparing the absolute numbers of deaths in these same 56 days in each of the last 11 years.
CC BY-SA
In England and Wales the most recent year of low mortality was 2014, in which 82,670 people died and life expectancy across the whole UK temporarily reached its highest ever level for both men and women. However, 2014 was not that unusual until recently. For the five years before that, between 2009 and 2013, 85,023 people died on average in England and Wales in these same eight winter weeks. Part of the reason why there may be fewer recorded deaths during these eight weeks in 2016, 2019 and 2020 than in 2015 and 2018 is because more people died when social services and the NHS were particularly overwhelmed, leaving fewer frail people alive and at risk the next year.
The huge rises in mortality across the UK since 2010 are
now widely accepted to have been linked to austerity cutbacks on services, especially social services. The rise in deaths was not due to ageing as there were very few births in the 1930s when the population currently aged 81 to 90 were born.
Mitigation matters
So how well is the UK in general geared up to deal with the spread of the virus?
It has been reported that,
compared to Germany, the UK has
five times fewer ventilators per person at risk. Since austerity deepened the UK has been spending roughly a
million euros (£925,000) less a week on its health services compared to Germany.
There has been little planning and a great deal of denial. Reports have suggested it was only
on March 11 that the full scale of the challenge facing the NHS fully dawned on the government’s scientific advisers.