[Samm]

More on that new data which emerged at today's Downing Street briefing suggesting about one in six Londoners and one in 20 people elsewhere in England have had coronavirus.

How did those figures come about?

Public Health England says it is carrying out a range of seroprevalence studies - where they measure antibodies in the blood of healthy people - to better understand past rates of infection across the population.

In this case, they took 1,000 samples between mid-April and early May from each region.

From this, they say they could make a crude estimate that between 4.5% and 13% of the population have coronavirus antibodies.

With further statistical adjustments, they found about 17% of London adults had been infected; this compares to only 4.3% in the north-east of England.

As antibodies can take up to four weeks to develop, it is likely that the level outside London will increase as more samples are tested in the coming weeks.

Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at Public Health England, said: “Early surveillance suggests that rates of infection were higher in London than the rest of the country – which is consistent with data collected through our other systems.

"London was affected earlier and our data suggests that more of the London population became infected before the lockdown took effect."

BBC Source

Obviously not accurate at the moment, I just find it really MAD how quickly and contagious this virus was/is. I’m perched for more figures after more research has taken place.