Chris

Not necessarily catching covid in hospital, but quite possibly not suffering badly enough with covid to be hospitalised by it. It looks like asymptotic or mildly symptomatic people attending because of other illnesses or accidents are being recorded as if they are in hospital because of covid, resulting in an over-reporting of the hospitalisation rate in the present phase of the pandemic. I’m not convinced they’re seriously suggesting it’s a hospital acquired infection. The incubation period is AFAIK too long for that to be possible in many cases.

To be honest I can understand why HMG may be prepared to tolerate over-reporting at this point. I’m sure you’d be at the front of the queue handing out rotten fruit to chuck at them if there was even a whiff of under-reporting in the data. El Gov is well aware that there is going to be a public enquiry after all this and while it might not report until after the 2024 election, it will most likely compile and publish far more solid statistics well before then. It won’t do their electoral prospects any harm at all if the headlines are all about how it was never as bad as it seemed at the time.