The number of daily Covid cases continues to fall in England, despite Boris ignoring calls to re-impose Covid restrictions. This afternoon’s update from the Department of Health’s shows there were 34,029 new infections in the past 24 hours, marking a 22% fall compared to last Friday. MailOnline has more.
The news comes as the country’s largest official surveillance study found that cases had levelled off last week for the first time in nearly three months – but prevalence was still high.
The Office for National Statistics report estimated 1.1 million people in England were infected with the virus at any time in the week to October 30 – the equivalent of one in 50.
The finding finally brought the ONS study in line with the official testing programme, which has reported falling cases for 12 of the past 13 days.
Officials also revealed the UK’s R rate had fallen for the first time in months today, and is now estimated to be between 0.9 and 1.1.
Experts said the statistics suggested that the latest wave, triggered when schools went back from summer, had ‘likely peaked’ thanks to combination of vaccine immunity and previous infection.
It came as it emerged Britain is no longer the Covid capital of Western Europe. Austria, Belgium and Ireland are all recording higher infection rates and Germany looks bound to surpass the UK’s in weeks.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: More here on the Covid outbreaks in Belgium, Austria and Ireland’s in spite of having restrictions such as mask mandates and vaccine passports in place.
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