Cases of COVID-19 in England fell again today with 97,770 reported, the first time there have been fewer than 100,000 reported since December 27th and a drop of 36% in a week.
The number of Covid patients in ICU also continued to fall.
Senior Government figures said that it showed the lockdown imposed on the advice of senior advisers before Christmas was working to control the outbreak of the highly infectious Omicron variant, but warned the public mustn’t become complacent and think it is over. “Lifting restrictions too quickly will just result in a resurgence of the virus which will overwhelm the NHS,” Health Secretary Sajid Javid said.
With infections currently higher in Scotland than south of the border, Nicola Sturgeon said that her additional restrictions, requiring people to keep their masks on while eating, was clearly making an impact. “What we need to keep in mind is that the infection rate would certainly be much worse had we not brought in these additional measures. Modelling from Imperial College has shown that Scots are particularly infectious while eating, and without this measure there would currently be 800,000 people in ICU with Covid in Edinburgh alone.”
Michael Gove said: “Some people say that Covid waves just fall by themselves, and spread dangerous ideas online implying that restrictions are not needed to control coronavirus outbreaks. The fact that infections are falling after we brought in restrictions shows the importance of using these tried and tested measures. Government is working closely with technology and social media companies to ensure all dangerous content online is removed.”
The Prime Minister echoed these sentiments. “Thank God I Listened to Neil Ferguson,” he said. “His predictions are always spot on.”
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