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Four in 10 people in the UK are swabbing at least once a month, exclusive polling for MailOnline reveals.
The same proportion have also worn a face covering in the past 30 days, despite mandatory mask rules being dropped last January.
It comes amid a resurgence of the virus, with Covid hospitalisations nearing a three-month high and GP surgeries cancelling appointments after outbreaks caused staff shortages.
And leading experts fear the outbreak, which surveillance data suggests has left one in 40 in England infected, will continue to pick up pace in the coming weeks.
Four in 10 people in the UK have taken a virus swab in the last month, exclusive polling for MailOnline reveals
According to the ZOE Health Study some 136,722 new symptomatic Covid cases were reported across the UK on March 20, 2023. It takes the total number of people currently predicted to have Covid in UK to above 1.5million, rising by around 300,000 in just a week
When asked how regularly they had taken a Covid test in the last month, nearly one in five people (17 per cent) said they had tested once, while a tenth have swabbed twice and eight per cent have tested once a week.
One in 25 tested twice a week, while just two per cent are checking their Covid status once a day or more.
Meanwhile, six in 10 (58 per cent) said they did not take a test.
Respondents were also asked how often they had worn a mask in the last month.
The vast majority (57 per cent) said they had not worn a mask.
But six per cent reported wearing a covering daily, while seven per cent donned a mask twice a week and one in 10 people (nine per cent) wore one once a week.
Around a tenth of people said they put on a mask once (nine per cent) or twice (10 per cent) per month.
It comes as a Covid monitoring project, ran by health-tech firm ZOE, found that Covid rates have been on the up for a week.
It predicts nearly 1.5million people in the UK had symptomatic Covid on Monday — up by a fifth from 1.2million just one week earlier.
Current levels are in line with those detected in mid-January, when cases were declining from the winter peak of around 1.7million, according to ZOE data.
Professor Tim Spector, the epidemiologist behind the survey, said cold weather — which encourages people to mix indoors — and children are driving the rise.
For months, health chiefs have warned about a rise in cases and hospitalisations driven by Omicron sub-variants Kraken (XBB.1.5) and Orthrus (CH.1.1).
Kraken was the dominant strain in the UK by the end of February, causing 50.4 per cent of cases, according to ONS data, while Orthrus was behind 19.7 per cent.
Professor Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London, called the surge 'definitely something to worry about'.
He told MailOnline the UK was in a 'rather serious situation' because of the waning vaccine immunity coupled with new variants.
Many bouts of these Covid infections are 'neither brief nor mild', added Professor Altmann, who is a member of the notorious Independent SAGE group that lobbied for a 'zero Covid' approach.
He said: 'They carry a reduced but significant risk of Long Covid.
'This all puts strain on the infected, strain on the workplace, on the NHS and thus, on the economy.'
'For my taste we'd be continuing to think about the mitigations,' Professor Altmann added.
Such measures could include face masks in public spaces and rolling out vaccine boosters.
However, other surveillance studies are yet to pick up the increase in Covid levels.
The latest update from the gold-standard Office for National Statistics infection monitoring shows cases have flatlined at 1.3million.
However, its data only goes up to March 7 and its statisticians warn that the trends remain 'uncertain', with a 'mixed picture' across regions and age groups in England.
According to the ZOE Health Study some 136,722 new symptomatic Covid cases were reported across the UK on March 20, 2023. It takes the total number of people currently predicted to have Covid in UK to above 1.5million, rising by around 300,000 in just a week
'Infection numbers don't necessarily correspond to severe illness and it's only if there is a sustained increase in that number that we have a problem,' he said.
Meanwhile, Professor Robert Dingwall, a sociologist who advised the Government on the virus during the pandemic, told MailOnline: 'We should expect rates to go up and down a bit like any other respiratory infection.
'With the current state of knowledge, reintroducing masks is really theatre rather than practical infection control.'
It comes as latest hospital data for England shows 1,189 people infected with Covid were admitted on March 13.
It is the highest figure logged since the end of December and is not far off this winter's peak of 1,376.
However, current admission levels are nowhere near levels seen earlier in the pandemic, when a high of 4,134 admissions were logged per day.
And just a third of the 1,189 admissions logged last week were due to Covid — with the other patients hospitalised for another ailment, such as a broken leg, but also testing positive.
Another round of the historic jab drive will begin in the next fortnight.
The over-75s, care home residents and those aged five and over with a weakened immune system will be eligible for the booster injection — the groups deemed most at risk of serious illness from the virus.
This is because of the wall of immunity, built up from vaccines and numerous waves, have drastically blunted the virus and morphed it into a milder flu-like illness for the vast majority.
Comment: Oh really!?
The Government has insisted it will never revert back to pandemic-era measures unless a doomsday variant emerges.
However, some hospitals continue to recommend that patients and staff wear masks in certain areas.
The current outbreak has seen one GP surgery this week tell patients that it has 'exceptionally low numbers' of doctors due to staff sickness and will only be offering 'urgent appointments'.
The practice said: 'We are currently experiencing high levels of Covid amongst our clinical team resulting in staff absence and reduced appointment capacity.'
Comment: Are these doctors vaccinated by any chance?
'On Friday 24 March, we will have exceptionally low numbers of GPs and will be offering urgent appointments only.
'Where possible, please submit repeat prescription requests on another day.'
But Dr Clarke acknowledged the GP surgeries were 'most likely' to be hit with outbreaks of Covid, given the spread of cold and flu between people.
He told MailOnline: 'Clusters of infection [...] are always going to occur.
'We're all familiar with the spread of colds and flu between people we associate with on a daily basis, when it hits a public service like a GP's surgery, people are most likely to notice.'
The last Covid wave appears to have peaked at 2.5million infections in England at the close of December.
This is far below the levels reached in previous outbreaks.
Infections climbed as high as 3.7million last winter during the spread of the original Omicron variant — but this was topped a few months later, when the number reached a record 4.1million.
Reader Comments
By the way, I had some kind of epiphany yesterday. That presumes rational thinking.
However, rationality is switched off within said group.
Those people do not just behave like hypnotized, they are hypnotized !
It is just not called that way officially, but it is the very same thing. That is what the media is here for, and they permanently contradicting themselves feed into the fear / hypnotic trance loop.
Which OTOH means <we> are not normal, because we are not so easy hypnotisable. Mentally ill, as they would say ...
FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real, the nonsensical story these fools tell THEMSELVES, about what could or would happen and rarely does. Let them die....
Every person I see who wears a mask outside, in their car or anywhere else (except hospital and nursing home) I see people with fear in their eyes. Half the time I want to say Boo to them as I walk by, just to get a reaction, but it's not worth it.
It's becoming obvious that crash and burn Politicis is the order of business, be there long enough to play out their devastating contribution and then be removed quickly without reproach with a more than comfortable existence.
Boris the king of Spin, who unashamedly hides behind his advisors, is responsible in the UK for this lingering blue plague of unnecessary fabric that was totally ineffective and made a lot of people wealthy and NOT healthy.
LOL! I open the washroom window after a large dump, for exactly the same reason.
What meat is on a bat and they eat bugs too, just as Gates would have one do
"have drastically blunted the virus and morphed it into a milder flu-like illness for the vast majority."
THE CURE? Crank up more jabberwocky, and fake PCR tests and let these fuckers die....get rid of stupid humans, asap !
This is why for hundreds of years, if not thousands, people went to work sick.
I for one hated people going to work sick, cause we all would get sick. If I couldn't stand, I took a sick day.
Anyone else remember the precovid harping people used to say to sick people or wives to their husbands, what's the matter with you, you got a little cold? and to the husbands, you got a little mancold?
You sneeze in public now and peoples heads turn.
Yeap, they've truly weaponized the common cold.
The real science...Make up your own mind. Truth or Lies.
[Link] Nanotechnology: self assembly structures in mRNA-injections
Yes it is scary, to think, with a rational mind. How could billions of people be duped into believing, as "Safe and Effective". Also saving family members, for the sake of the human family.
Has left families divided, the devastating life alliterating injuries, and who knows what the end result will enfold, in the coming years.
Off, the top of my head, I can think, 10 people with life changes, and I do not have a wide circle. That have received the jab.
Those who have been warning of the coming ‘New World Order’ never seriously believed the Elite would try something like this. The public are not that gullible, they reasoned. But the Elite understood something that the watchmen did not. They understood that vast numbers of rational people will believe an outrageous lie if “everyone else” believes it. The trick is to keep telling everyone the same lie, over and over, loudly and insistently, and warn of baleful consequences for those who don’t believe it. Taken together, fear and deception are a potent narcotic. The Elite also had a powerful diagnostic tool at their disposal. They could analyze the vast quantity of soft data online which reveals the fears, attitudes, opinions and beliefs of billions of people. This opened an exceptionally large window on mass psychology and human behavior. In addition, a close study of the public response to earlier ‘pandemic’ threats, notably the SARS-1 outbreak of 2003 and the H1N1 scare of 2009, would have allowed key behavioral factors to be identified. They could predict, with a high degree of accuracy, how submissive, credulous and compliant the public would prove to be when faced with a major ‘pandemic’ threat backed up by intense pseudo-scientific propaganda, phony tests, and life-threatening rhetoric from our respective governments.
Given these factors, it is easier to understand why a psychological operation of this magnitude had a high probability of success. What is less clear is why it should continue to exercise such a powerful grip over the minds of billions of people more than 3 years later. Clearly, in our fallen human condition, despite our ability to think rationally and weigh the evidence before us, mankind is still vulnerable to cunning manipulation. What we are witnessing today is misplaced trust on a massive scale, a universal refusal to believe that our governments could work together in secret to implement a plan which could undermine our whole way of life. When men no longer trust in God, they have no choice but to trust in men. If they open their eyes to the dark reality they are now facing, where the people they have been trusting to lead them into a safe and prosperous future have actually been doing the very opposite, they will lose all hope. As their eyes slowly open, they will know first-hand what Jesus meant when he spoke of - “Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth...” (Luke 21:26)
Not that I am a biblical reader, but that Luke passage strikes me as something
strange, bearing in mind, that several areas of the bible, are constructed and confabulated.
[Link] From the Bible Gateway website.
Contradiction in terms. "I never ate any, but it tasted off"