Today& #39;s #Covid19UK death figures will probably have caused some alarm. However, I don& #39;t think it is cause for dismay. As has been observed by a number of people (and denied by others - mostly not statisticians I think), we have been following Italy& #39;s curve for some time. 1/4

Italy& #39;s highest daily deaths figure of 919 occurred on 27th March, i.e. 12 days ago. We& #39;re tracking at Italy+14. The data are noisy (they go up and down a bit); we& #39;ve had a constant decrease in the percentage increase of deaths per day, and this is crucial 2/4

- when averaged over 3 days to try to eliminate noise (if you like, the second differential is lowering ), for the past 6 days. This is only a very slight reversal of that (12.6% to 12.9%). At this stage in their outbreak, Italy& #39;s curve was at a similar stage. 3/4

So, whilst we could see a higher figure than 938 deaths in one day, I& #39;m going to stick my neck out here and say I don& #39;t think we& #39;ll see a much higher daily total, and this could indeed be the highest. 4/4