Rates of people testing positive for Covid-19 in England still appear to be levelling off, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest.

The new data, which covers the period from 3 to 9 August 2020, reveals about one in 1,900 people in the community are now thought to have the virus, with an estimated 3,800 new cases per day.

While these data are similar to last week’s figures, the ONS warns they are not directly comparable, as the modelling approach has changed.

Nonetheless the ONS says the results indicate no clear sign of a rise or fall in rates of people testing positive for Covid-19 in England since the week before.

“There is some evidence of a small increase in the percentage of people testing positive for Covid-19 in July, following a low point in June, but this appears to have now levelled off,” the ONS team report.

The new figures came as Boris Johnson announced that further lockdown easing, paused at the start of August, would now go ahead, meaning – among other changes – soft play areas, ice rinks and bowling alleys will be allowed to open from Saturday and close-contact beauty services can resume.

The government also announced on Friday that large parts of northern England and Leicester would remain under tighter lockdown restrictions due to higher infection rates in localised areas.

According to the latest government figures, the growth rate for the whole of the UK is now between -1% to -4% and 0 to -4% for England alone, while the R estimate for the both the UK and England alone is between 0.8 and 1.0.

But once again the figures come with the note: “Estimates that use more timely data reflecting infections, suggest a higher R for England than shown here. As a result, Sage does not have confidence that R is currently below 1 in England.”

On Thursday a further 18 coronavirus deaths were announced in the UK – a figure that now refers to the number of people who have had a positive test result and died within 28 days. The total now stands at 41,347 deaths.

The ONS figures also provide results of antibody testing carried out among 5,248 people aged 16 and over, revealing 265 tested positive for Covid antibodies between 26 April and 9 August 2020. That, they say, suggests about 6.2% of people in England have had Covid in the past, equating to about one in 16 people.

“The percentage of people testing positive for antibodies is higher in London than in Yorkshire and the Humber, the east Midlands, the south-east and the south-west of England,” the team note.

The figures chime with data from the React2 study released on Thursday which suggested about 6% of people in England had had the virus, based on home finger-prick antibody tests of 100,000 people.

The ONS also released figures for Wales, revealing that in the period from 3 to 9 August around 1,500 people in Wales had Covid, a rate of about 1 in 2,100 people.

Should infection rates remain stable in Wales, groups of up to four households will be able to gather from 22 August.

Graham Cooke, professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College London who co-authored the React2 study said the ONS data continued to give important insights into community transmission.

“That recent infection is not clearly increasing is reassuring as further easing of lockdown is planned, but should not make us complacent while the virus is still circulating in the community and giving rise to new cases,” he said.