An official prediction that coronavirus deaths would soon pass those registered in the first wave has been quietly corrected by the government, it emerged last night, because they were too high. Earlier the Prime Minister and NHS chief executive Sir Simon Stevens used to a graph of rising Covid-19 inpatients to justify England's second lockdown. However, Sir Simon also spelled out the roughly week-long lag between infection and hospitalisation for those who become seriously ill, with death or discharge occurring an average 9 to 19 days later. By the beginning of October that had become 2,000 coronavirus in- patients, and, now, at the beginning of November that is over 11,000. That's the equivalent of 22 of our hospitals across England full of coronavirus patients – those are facts, those are not projections, forecasts, speculations, those are the patients in the hospital today.'

Source: Daily Mail November 06, 2020 02:11 UTC