By my calculations, hospital admissions are currently doubling approx. every 15 days. And remember, the latest numbers exclude admissions in Scotland (where cases are surging at the moment), so the actual doubling rate is probably a bit faster than that.
Judging by the death figures now more than doubling every week, there's a good chance people aren't making it to hospital, or the hospital numbers are just wrong, and there's not enough tests/ capability, to accurately reflect the current increasing infection rate.
9-15 Sep: 64 deaths
16-22 Sep: 125 deaths (pretty much double)
23-29 Sep: 281 deaths (more than double)
It's the same as before, any time the testing system gets under stress or there's a sharp outbreak, the positive cases can't keep up, as there's not the capacity to cope with the increase.
This is the problem:
Where the tests processed meets the testing capability line, we have a massive, massive problem. 2/3 of that capacity might be in the South, yet 2/3 of the infections in the North.
So you have 2/3 trying to get testing capacity from 1/3 of the available capability, where it's needed, it's half. So this is either going to lead to being too slow, or people travelling too far to get a test. If they travel further the chance of infection spread massively increases.