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Your support makes all the difference.The number of people who have died within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test in the UK has risen by 533, pushing the death toll to 62,566.
According to official figures, a further 16,578 people have tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday.
Deaths have dropped by nine per cent (285) in the last seven days, and estimates of the latest R number remains at 0.8 to 1 as of 4 December, government data shows.
There have now been a total of 1,766,819 positive Covid-19 cases in the UK since the start of the pandemic. The daily number of virus tests conducted as on Wednesday stands at 294,966.
It comes after the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 jabs began rolling out on Tuesday, with England chief medical officer telling MPs that vaccination will reduce the death rate and hospital admissions from the virus.
Professor Chris Whitty told the Commons Science and Technology and Health and Social Care Committee on Wednesday that there would be a “gradual retreat” from the current coronavirus restrictions, “rather than it’s just going to go away”.
He said: “At a certain point, society, through political leaders, through elected ministers and through Parliament, will say this level of risk is a level of risk that we think it is appropriate to tolerate.
“Just as we accept that in an average 7,000 people die of flu, and in a bad flu year 20,000 people die of flu, we accept that as that is what happens biologically.
“At a certain point you say, ‘actually, the risk is now low enough that we can largely do away with certainly the most onerous things that we have to deal with’.”
But there is a risk that the public may think the pandemic is “all over” due to the vaccine being rolled out, warned Sir Patrick Vallance.
The chief scientific adviser cautioned: “The biggest risk we face now is everyone thinks this is all over. And it isn’t all over.
“We have a very important light at the end of the tunnel with vaccines. We’ve got a lot to do to roll out the vaccines, we’ve got a lot to do to make sure the vulnerable are protected.
“We’re a long way off yet knowing how we can move it to the rest of the population, that’s dependent upon things like does the AZ (AstraZeneca/Oxford) vaccine get approved.
“It’s not the time to suddenly say we relax everything and, if that happens, we will have a big surge,” he added.
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