Dear UK Journalists. I suspect some of you are going to be rightly asked to write up the striking jump in SARS-CoV-2 cases registered today by PHE, and quite rightly. This is the "raw" case plot data. Some notes on this:

First off this is broadly not a good development; no sugar coating - noone wants to see case numbers grow like this. However there are some points to note here.

First off the testing regime changed substantially in UK (and many other places) over the summer (say - mid-May). You should mentally think of before May and after May as separate data series - visualisation-wise I would potentially colour them differently for readers.

Try to stay away from "the same level of reported cases as April XX" - even though true, it implies an equivalency which is not present. Strawman "There has been a sharp spike in reported cases. Although we expect higher case numbers being reported since the broadening >>

<< of testing over the summer, the increase in case numbers is concerning; deaths from COVID are still relatively low, but the concern is that the infection level cannot be contained in the currently low risk younger groups"

Crudely the April numbers should be 10-50 fold higher than reported for real infections whereas the current cases are something like 2-4 fold (we know this from the random survey the ONS does across the UK). Need some pro-modellers to narrow those numbers (paging @AdamJKucharski)

Similar to Spain and France, the UK cases look higher in younger people - 20-30 year olds. They are at lower risk themselves, but the infections do bleed over into older groups over time.

A natural question is to ask "why is this happening now?". There might be multiple reasons - people coming back from holiday; school starting changing contacts of sixth formers and others; school starting encouraging different work patterns;

people with family elsewhere in Europe coming back from their summer with family break; increasingly relaxed attitudes to pubs and clubs. It is a very hard thing to unpick the "why" and probably multiple reasons are contributing.

A bigger question is "what do we do next in the UK?". No easy solutions. The first point here is not to panic - deaths and critically hospitalisations and ICU beds are still low + flat. But - no complacency here. Everyone has a role to play - central gov, local gov, individuals

For individuals the main things are: 1. Follow advice - in particular, isolate if you have symptoms or asked to isolate, and get a test quickly 2. Wear masks in mid to high risk situations (indoors, shops, public transport). 3. Avoid high risk situations if possible.

Final thing as we navigate this - be kind to yourself, your family and your neighbours/society around you.