Up to four in 10 Covid infections in the first wave may have caught the virus in hospital, according to the latest research.
Those infections would have had a 'substantial' impact on deaths, government papers show. It was previously thought that the figure was around a fifth, or one in five.
But researchers at Public Health England and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine also looked at the numbers of people testing positive within two weeks of discharge.
Under the most conservative estimate, which only included people infected after at least 15 days in hospital, just 8.8 per cent of infections were found to be “nosocomial” or acquired in hospital, equating to 7,906 people, reports The Telegraph.