SARS-COV-2 infection rate stabilizing at ~6%

Does this mean it's never going away?

I haven’t posted for a while because I didn’t feel I had anything “off the radar” to add to the broader conversation. That changed the other day when I roamed outside my normal SARS-COV-2 infection cases territory and into the realm of testing.

The UK Coronavirus Dashboard chart for infection cases has been showing a steady decline for almost a year.

This trend has understandably created the perception that SARS-COV-2 infections are becoming a thing of the past. But what if this is more a reflection of levels of testing rather than overall rates of infection? This question prompted me to browse the “Testing” page of the UK Coronavirus Dashboard where the first chart immediately caught my eye.

What stood out to me was the percentage of +PCR tests since last July. You can see in the highlighted region (shown in the second chart) that this value has been slowly stabilizing to around 6%. This is despite the fact that the levels of testing have dropped to a fraction of what they were in the past.

These two views combined would seem to indicate that the apparent decline in cases is simply a function of declining testing while the actual rate of infection within the population is now holding steady.

So what could be the explanation for this? If we look at the UK data for rate of reinfections as a percentage of total infections over time we can see there is a very steady increase with no signs of slowing down.

While only a theory, this data would seem to support the notion that SARS-COV-2 reinfections are becoming chronic within the population.

So, does this mean SARS-COV-2 infections, and by extension COVID, are never going away?

Please let me know your thoughts.

John