I felt this was the case but its interesting to see if spelled out like this…
One in five people in England may have had coronavirus, new modelling suggests, equivalent to 12.4 million people, rising to almost one in two in some areas.
It means that across the country as a whole the true number of people infected to date may be five times higher than the total number of known cases according to the government’s dashboard.
In some areas, however, the disparity may be even greater. Parts of London and the south are estimated to have had up to eight times as many cases as have been detected to date.
The analysis, by Edge Health, reveals that the true number of coronavirus infections in England could be as high as 12.4 million, equivalent to 22% of the population, as of 3 January.
The government’s test-and-trace programme had detected 2.4 million cases by the same date.
The model estimates the number of cases in an areas by comparing its number of deaths against an estimated infection fatality rate. It assumes a three-week lag between recorded cases and any associated deaths.
The results suggest that more than 10% of residents in 138 of England’s 149 upper-tier local authorities have contracted the disease.