Cases down by 90% from peak – and at lowest for 5 months

COVID-19 cases are down 90 per cent from the peak and deaths at the lowest for four months, data shows.

Yesterday another 5,455 positive cases and 104 deaths were recorded – the smallest figures since before the second national lockdown in November.

The data is an astonishing testament to Britain’s world-leading vaccination programme.

Hospitalisations and deaths are falling significantly faster among the over-80s, all of whom have now been offered the vaccine. Admissions of over-80s with coronavirus to intensive care units have now dropped to single figures, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.

Deaths were above 1,000 a day for most of January, peaking at 1,820 on January 20. But they have fallen by more than one third over the past week and the latest daily figure is the lowest since October 26.

In early January, cases stayed above 50,000 for 13 days in a row, peaking at 68,053 on January 8. They have been below 10,000 for the past eight days and yesterday’s total was the lowest since September 28. The UK’s infection rate is just 100 cases per 100,000 people, down from 642 on January 4.

Pressure on the NHS is also continuing to lift as the vaccine slashes hospital admissions. There are 14,808 patients in hospital around the UK, down from a peak of 39,248 on January 18 and the lowest figure since November 10. Despite the overwhelmingly positive news, Government scientists claimed regional lockdowns may be needed into the summer.

Boris Johnson had vowed to axe the localised tier system and take a national approach to lifting lockdown. But some regions have five times the number of cases as others and infections are rising in nearly one in five local authorities.

Professor Graham Medley, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who sits on the Sage committee, said: ‘All the thinking that I’ve seen... has been largely national...

‘But the data will show different things in different parts of the country and so the challenge will be what do you do in terms of opening things up when in one place it says it’s a good idea, in other places it says it isn’t?’

On Friday England’s deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam described case rates in ‘quite a few areas of the UK’ as ‘burning quite hot’.

Officials are concerned by rising infections in the Midlands and the west coast of England. Corby in Northamptonshire has the highest rate in England, with 264.5 cases per 100,000 people.