UK is a bad example to choose. They used the highest possible sensitivity setting on the PCR test, to the degree that no meaningful information could be extracted from them.
In addition, anyone who died, for any reason, at any time after a positive test, was recorded as a covid death. Even if they died in a car accident months after they had the test.
Sources:
Covid-19: The problems with case counting:
"What is a case? One issue in trying to interpret numbers of detected cases is that there is no set definition of a case. At the moment it seems that a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) positive result is the only criterion required for a case to be recognised.
In any other disease we would have a clearly defined specification that would usually involve signs, symptoms, and a test result, .... “We are moving into a biotech world where the norms of clinical reasoning are going out of the window. A PCR test does not equal covid-19; it should not, but in some definitions it does."
http://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3374.full
Why no one can ever recover from COVID-19 in England:
"A Department of Health and Social Care source said: ‘You could have been tested positive in February, have no symptoms, then hit by a bus in July and you’d be recorded as a COVID death.’” https://web.archive.org/web/20201012190837/https://www.cebm....
And my favourite... Sir Humphrey responds to the allegation of test inaccuracy...
"Positive test results at the limit of detection that occur late in the cycle of infection represent individuals with a low or very low risk of transmission, as a result of the decline in infectious virus production or remnants of viral RNA in respiratory secretions. The clinical significance of these positive results, at the limit of detection of the assay, are difficult to interpret in the absence of a clinical history and context. Possible reasons for the non-repeatability of these results include stochastic effects at the limit of detection of the assay, true prolonged low level detection of the virus, and very rarely, analytical errors in sample handling." https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sars-cov-2-rna-te...