AT LAST... INFECTION RATES IN RETREAT
Amid the gloom, ‘R-rate’ falls to as little as 0.6 across swathes of nation
COVID cases are falling across most of England, official figures revealed last night.
Meanwhile, a separate study by Cambridge University shows the R-rate in the majority of the country is now below one – and as low as around 0.6 in many areas.
The figures are the strongest evidence yet that lockdown is working and we may be past the peak of this wave of the virus. An R-rate of below one means the epidemic is shrinking.
Public Health England revealed weekly cases have come down despite the new, highly infectious strain. Officials said infections were declining in all age groups except the over-80s.
Hospital admissions are still at their highest rates of the pandemic, with NHS bosses saying they are under ‘enormous and increasingly untenable pressure’. Experts have warned that high death figures are also likely to continue for some weeks. But news that cases and the R-rate are declining provides some optimism that the pressure on the Health Service will eventually ease. Around 35.8million people live in the areas where the R-rate is below one – just over 60 per cent of England’s population.
The number of vaccine doses administered passed three million yesterday amid claims that half a million a day
could be delivered by next week. The Mail revealed yesterday that the UK now has a stockpile of 21million jabs, enough to meet the Government’s pledge to vaccinate the elderly and clinically vulnerable by the middle of next month.
Yesterday, the UK reported 1,248 deaths and 48,682 new cases – down from 52,618 last Thursday. In other dramatic coronavirus developments:
Ministers were savaged as travellers from high-risk countries continued to arrive in the UK unchecked;
All flights from Portugal and South America were finally banned amid fears over the mutant Brazilian strain;
A row broke out over the vaccine rollout in London, which lags behind most of England – despite having the highest levels of infection;
It emerged one in five major hospitals in England now has no spare intensive care beds;
Figures showed a record 4.46million people are waiting for treatment;
Ministers prepared to reveal a controversial new government advertising campaign warning meeting someone for a coffee could ‘cost a life’;
It emerged that Britain’s biggest police force is handing out a record 300 penalties a day;
A report claimed Covid had caused the largest fall in Britain’s population since the Second World War.
The latest official Government estimate of the UK’s R-number, issued last week, said it was between one and 1.4. But Cambridge University experts using more recent data said the number – how many people each Covid sufferer goes on to infect – was now below one in most of England.
In a report last night, the university’s Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit estimated it was 0.61 in London and 0.64 in the South East.
The authors said: ‘It is now possible to estimate that the Tier Four restriction introduced on Saturday, December 19, in combination with the school holidays and reduced movements around the Christmas period, have contributed to a downward trends in R and the slowing down in the growth in the number of infections in most regions.’
The report said R is highest in the South West and North East, at between 1.1 and 1.2.
Meanwhile, a weekly Public Health England report yesterday said that Covid cases were falling across most of England and in all age groups apart from the over-80s. The worstaffected regions of recent weeks, including London, the South East and East England, all recorded fewer cases last week than in the previous seven days.
Of the nine English regions, infections are going up in only three – the North West, South West and West Midlands – with cases increasing most sharply in Liverpool.
London remains the biggest virus hotspot, but its sevenpressure day infection rate of 865 per 100,000 is down from 1,043 in the previous week.
Daily hospital admissions in London and the South East also appear to be stabilising, having peaked last week.
There have been 3,226 new admissions to London hospitals in the past four days, down slightly on the 3,523 in the four days before that. This will provide hope the immense on the NHS in these regions will soon begin to ease. The weekly PHE report found that in the seven days to January 10 case rates have fallen across all age groups except those aged 80 and above.
Young adults are still the most likely to be infected, with a rate of 879 per 100,000 population in those aged between 20 and 29. For people aged 80 and over, the most likely to become severely ill, the weekly rate rose from 475 to 577.
Hospital admissions are at their highest levels of the entire pandemic and NHS bosses say they are under enormous pressure. There is a lag of around two weeks between infection and hospitalisations, meaning experts believe the worst is yet to come for the NHS.
Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance has also warned high death numbers will ‘carry on for some weeks’. The three deadliest days of Britain’s Covid crisis have all been recorded in 2021.
Dr Yvonne Doyle, Medical Director at Public Health England, said: ‘The rate that people are being admitted to hospital is now higher than at any point during the pandemic. We are still seeing thousands of people having to go to hospital each day.
‘Worryingly these numbers are likely to continue to get worse before we see the benefits of our efforts to protect the NHS, which will mean more pressure for our health service than ever before.’
Professor Neil Ferguson, whose early modelling of Covid-19 led to the UK’s first lockdown, said the current wave of the epidemic may be coming under control.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I think it’s much too early to say exactly when case numbers are going to start coming down, but in some NHS regions in England and in Wales there’s sign of plateauing.’
But Professor Ferguson warned restrictions of some sort could be needed for months until vaccines provide a high level of protection.
‘Slowing growth of infections’
MINISTERS were savaged last night for failing to get a grip on Britain’s border shambles as travellers from high-risk Covid countries continued to arrive into the country unchecked.
Passengers from Brazil and South Africa, where two worrying mutant virus strains have emerged, told how they were able to waltz through border controls yesterday without facing a single question.
In a bid to stem the risk posed, the Government last night announced it would ban arrivals from all South American nations, as well as Portugal and Cape Verde – popular stopping-off points for travellers on connecting flights from South America to the UK. The ban finally came in at 4 o’clock this morning.
But ministers were accused of dithering and faced questions about why the ban wasn’t introduced earlier when officials appear to have known about the more infectious Brazilian variant for days.
Separately, the Government faced a furious row over a last-minute delay to a new preflight testing regime to screen passengers before they arrive.
The scheme – which requires anyone wanting to fly to Britain from any country to have a
‘Dodge having to get a test’
negative Covid test – was supposed to begin today at 4am. However, late on Wednesday night it was delayed by another three days until Monday.
And a loophole in the rules emerged which could allow travellers to dodge having to get a test abroad for short stays.
Last night, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer described the situation with airports and testing as a ‘complete mess’. He added: ‘People will be bewildered and they will feel that we’re exposed – there’s a gap in our defences.
‘Priti Patel has talked tough about the borders but other countries have been doing testing for months and months.’
Yvette Cooper, chairman of the home affairs select committee, said: ‘The Government has consistently been really slow to adopt the kinds of testing or quarantine approaches that other countries have adopted so much more comprehensively.’
A string of other countries have, for some time, required travellers to test negative before flying in but Britain’s pre- departure testing regime comes into force ten months after the pandemic began. Its start was delayed for three days until Monday after the Department for Transport failed to publish guidance for passengers and airlines until 11pm on Wednesday night, barely more than 24 hours before the measures were due to come in.
Asked on Sky News why people were not being tested for the virus when entering the country many months after the UK’s first case, safeguarding minister Victoria Atkins said: ‘There’s a very delicate balancing act between controlling the virus and ensuring we are not putting too much of a burden on the economy.’
Asked why travel between Brazil and neighbouring countries to the UK had not yet been closed off, she said: ‘What we need to ensure is that when we make these very, very important decisions that have a huge impact on people’s personal lives, but also businesses, we have got to have a little bit of time to let that bed in.’
WHEN the history of the pandemic is written, prominent chapters will surely be reserved for two blunders that yielded the most tragic repercussions.
One will chronicle the Government’s incomprehensible refusal to shut Britain’s borders when the killer disease surfaced. Instead, millions of travellers from Covidravaged countries were waved in.
The other will focus on the bewildering decision to discharge infected hospital patients into care homes, leaving vulnerable residents as lambs to the slaughter.
A year on, have our leaders learned from these calamities? It seems not. For they are in grave danger of repeating their mistakes.
Take the latest border shambles. For at least five days, ministers have known about a super- strength coronavirus strain circulating in Brazil. Yet abysmally, only today did they impose a travel ban including all of South America.
To add to the fiasco, plans requiring international arrivals to prove they are disease-free have been delayed.
It is madness that while Britons endure police harassment for sitting on park benches during lockdown, potentially contagious foreigners can set foot here without so much as a temperature test.
When a new mutation was discovered in Kent, the international community immediately placed Britain in quarantine.
By contrast, our Government frequently dithers, holds conference calls, fills in lengthy forms and dithers some more, before alighting on a decision. At best, such vacillation is unhelpful. At worst, it plays Russian roulette with public health.
Take, too, the care crisis. With hospitals overwhelmed, the NHS has asked homes to accept Covid patients, raising fears they will – again – become houses of death.
Of course, if Matt Hancock had kept his promise to vaccinate all residents by last month, this wouldn’t be a problem. His new deadline of Sunday week must be hit.
If GPs need bribes to give jabs, so be it (although in a national emergency that leaves a sour taste). The Health Secretary must also warn NHS bureaucrats that delays caused by red tape and jealous guarding of fiefdoms will not be tolerated.
Despite previous errors, the Government is now stepping up to the plate.
Boris Johnson is doing supremely well on immunisation. Free from the floundering EU, Britain has already passed three million injections. By next week the breathtakingly ambitious aim is 500,000 a day.
Predictably, Sir Keir Starmer bellyaches. But under Labour’s damaging blueprint to break up and nationalise the pharmaceutical industry, we wouldn’t have a vaccine at all.
If the Prime Minister hits and, crucially, maintains his exacting target, Britain will be on the last lap of this nightmare. Boris would then be cheered rapturously all the way to the finishing tape.