Covid cases at lowest for for a month
INFECTIONS have plunged to their lowest level for a month in a sign Freedom Day has not fuelled a resurgence in the epidemic.
There were 21,952 cases recorded across the UK yesterday, the lowest daily figure since June 29 and down from 24,950 last monday.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid had warned cases were likely to reach 100,000 a day after restrictions were eased on July 19.
But his gloomy prediction has so far been proved wrong and instead there has been a sustained fall.
Cases are now down 60 per cent from the peak of 54,674 on July 17.
The epidemic appears to be firmly in retreat despite devastating warnings from Government scientists that cases could top 200,000 a day this month and the NHS could collapse. Another 24 deaths were recorded yesterday, and the death rate is now one tenth of what it was in previous waves due to the vaccine.
The recent surge in admissions has also levelled off and the number of patients in hospital is beginning to drop.
Daily hospital admissions have still not topped 1,000 a day in the third wave despite warnings from Government scientists this was inevitable. Yesterday another 912 patients were admitted to hospital with Covid-19 in the UK, down on the previous two days.
in total there are now 5,943 patients in hospital with coronavirus, compared to nearly 40,000 at the peak in January.
However, the Government’s daily figures also highlight a worrying fall in rates of vaccination. Yesterday just 21,266 first doses were given out – compared to more than half a million a day at the peak.
The slump in demand is linked to vaccine hesitancy in young people, and around one in three under-30s still have not had their first dose.
One Government scientist yesterday warned that young people are also putting off getting their jab because of an implication that ‘infections don’t matter’. Professor Stephen Reicher, a psychologist at the University of St Andrews, said: ‘if the Health Secretary can say “We’re going to have 100,000 cases a day, that doesn’t matter, we’re still going ahead with our policy”, and when you see reopening everywhere, it does begin to send the message that infections don’t matter.
‘And in fact there’s some evidence that the young people are beginning to say “Well, why should i get vaccinated? if infection doesn’t matter, why should i do things to avoid infection?”’
Professor Reicher, who sits on the Government advisory group Scientific Pandemic insights Group on Behaviours (Spi-B), said more must be done to make younger adults aware that vaccination is a matter of personal and social responsibility.
Professor Paul Hunter, from the University of east Anglia, said: ‘Today’s figures are important as they represent the first day that any impact of the opening of society on the 19th July would have been obvious in the statistics.
‘The fact that hospital admissions are now falling provides further evidence that the decline in cases in the last couple of weeks was real and not due to an artefact from changing testing or people deleting the nHS Covid app as some have suggested.’
‘Further evidence of a real decline’