Simple question, or is it?
What % of the UK population have now had covid since we first started testing for it?
I’m wondering how near/far away we are from the mythical “herd immunity”?
edit - just found the answer; seems to be about 11 million cases in total (likely more in reality, factoring in cases before we started testing and further asymptomatic cases).
These will be huge under estimates as they are test reliant as you noted.
The overall Pop Score across the pandemic is a good guide to the relative numbers in each borough as they relate total cases recorded there to the local popuation that gives a kind of league table over the past 21 months of comparative case numbers that remove the size of the location from the eqution as cities will always outscore rural villages even if the village has problems but the Pop score smooths out that effect.
So obviosly the lower the Pop Score both over the whole pandemc and on the day or week to week - all of which I post in here - tells you relatively how many cases a place has had over those periods telling you who has done well or badly and who is doing the same day to day or week to week. But it also tells you the percentage tested positive at glance.
Gov UK gives you Pop Scores for the regions as well that you can track.
For example London has a Pop Score of 15,027 and North West of 18,252 - the highest region. London has had more cases than North West but it is faring better with a bigger population evening that out.
All Pop Scores are in effect cases per 100,000 people across whatever period they are measuring.
So the current Pop Score as a fraction divided by 1000 tells you the % of the population that has tested positive.
So on the numbers above 15.027% of London and 18.252% of the NW have tested positive over the 21 months. Though some may have done so twice, of course.
You can find the up to date number for any town or region or nation and track them this way.
One reason Stockport is probably having high cases despite the best vaccination numbers in the region is that it has the lowest Pop Score in Greater Manchester across the pandemic and so by default has the most people not seemimgly having had Covid previously. That success cuts two ways when a new variant shows up, Hence its current Pop Score is one of the worst in GM as it has more targets.
