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Hello and welcome to More or Less,

the show that provides you with a refreshing dip in relevant statistics

rather than drowning in an Olympic swimming pool of confusing numbers.

I'm Tim Halford, and this week the daily count of COVID cases has been going up,

so how worried should we be?

A guide to risks in the time of coronavirus

is the government meeting its targets on test and trace,

and some important advice on racing jellyfish.

So first, on Sunday there was a jump in the number of COVID cases in the UK

reported by the government. It went from 1,813 reported on Saturday

to 2,988 new cases on Sunday. That rise by over a thousand cases

meant the highest daily case total since May.

Then, on Monday, the daily cases were also nearly 3,000.

On Tuesday, they fell back.

So what's going on? Let's put into action what we've learned on More or Less

over the last few months to try to resolve the puzzle.

I am joined by Josephine Cassidy, who's been looking at the numbers for a sell-o, Joe.

Hello. Now I remember back in June, we saw a big one-day rise in deaths

that turned out to be a backlog of old data being added to the figures.

So is that what's happening here?

No, that doesn't seem to be the case.

...