Anybody know why the reported infections have been falling substantially in the last few days? The preceding values plus the inevitable consequences of "freedom day" suggest it cannot possibly reflect the actual infection rate. I have seen comments on it happening but not on how it is being achieved? Anyone know or can make a reasonable guess?
I think that the only reasonable answer is that no one knows. The reported infections started to reduce a couple of weeks earlier in Scotland so I would not say that it cannot reflect changes in the actual infection rate. The following are possible reasons proposed by iSage (from memory!):
1. Schools have been gradually shutting down for the summer and as they are possibly the areas where the virus has had the greatest infection rates (the school children, but then the parents). The infection umbers broken down into age groups supported this and I think have been posted on here and are available on the iSage website.
2. The warmer weather has resulted in more people spending time outside, thereby limiting virus spread.
3. The increased number of people being vaccinated (and the ones who were vaccinated 3 weeks or so ago and so the vaccine will now provide some benefit). At >1 million per week out of a total population of 65 million possible hosts, this is small, but it does have an impact as the age range that is being vaccinated is the range that is more at risk of infection.
4. Number of school children not in school has increased t around a million (mainly due to self isolating) and so there are fewer hosts for the virus. I have just thought of this one and it may be insignificant.
Test positivity is going up (except for Scotland where positivity is reducing and number of hospital admissions is also reducing) and so the case numbers are missing more and more positive cases.
Freedom Day will not have had any noticeable effect on the figures yet, as it is too early, but if a lot of people were letting their guard down before Freedom Day, then any of these people who got infected will be adding to the daily number of cases.
The most likely scenario is that all the listed reasons are having some beneficial effect.
And if we are a couple of weeks behind Scotland (school summer holidays started earlier etc), then the effect is likely to be real and we are likely to see the number of cases continue to drop and hospital admissions start to slow down.
But overall there are a lot of unknowns and nobody really knows exactly what is happening and what is going to happen with any certainty.