The England figure is a small dip on yesterday, and down around 20% week on week.
Ministers & govt scientists have always said there would be fluctuations, which is fair enough, but frustratingly have refused to explain exactly why these changes are happening.
Some possible explanations for apparent slowdown:
general supply restrictions
focus on vaccinating hardest-to-reach over-80s
focus on reaching all care home residents by end of this week
diversion of supply to underperforming areas
Any, all or none could be at play!
The number of people who've had at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine in 🇬🇧 as of yesterday is
*7,447,199*
(up 282,812 on the day before, 7-day average 353,422)
That is 11.1% of the total population
Still long haul ahead in the UK's fight against covid but every indicator on gov.uk dashboard now pointing in the right direction. Cases falling rapidly, hospital admissions falling steadily and deaths falling for the first time in weeks. 771,710 tests yesterday!
(Lest we get too cheery, should remember that cases are dangerously high, hospitals basically overloaded, and many thousands more will die in the weeks ahead. Heading the right way but from a very grim starting point.)
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54,262 in 🏴 (NB this is two days' worth due to IT issue yesterday)
26,225 in 🏴
For England, this is a slight fall on the figure reported last Friday. The UK number will be higher than last Friday's but that's artificial thanks to the Scotland overcount.
The number of people who've had at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine in 🇬🇧 as of yesterday is
*7,891,184*
(up 443,985 on the day before, 7-day average 358,297)
That is 11.8% of the total population
Vaccines hero Kate Bingham on her reaction to the Novavax success: "When I heard the news last night, I'm afraid I broke the Dry January rule and celebrated with a glass of wine." #r4today
How did UK secure vaccine supplies? Bingham: "We were clearly at a disadvantage in terms of size and buying power so the way we chose to address that was by being nimble, and as co-operative and supportive as we possibly could be."
Asked about prospect of EU export ban on vaccines, Bingham says: "I just don't believe it will ever come to that, we've worked very co-operatively with the European Union." Points eg to Valneva - French company now making vaccines in Scotland.
Lifting of lockdown could look quite different to last spring/summer - No10 sources say we have learned a lot about effective measures, and new variants bring different challenges.
This is pretty disappointing. It's the first time we've seen a week-on-week fall in the England figures - a week ago the number was 301,362.
No10 responds - PM's spokesman: "We always said that there would be variations in the number of vaccinations that are provided day to day, we've said that supply remains the issue in terms of getting more vaccinations out to people as quickly as we can...
As this graph shows, among all age groups the number of ICU admissions as a proportion of all hospital admissions has been steadily falling since week 40 (ie start of Oct).
Figures for 65-74 and 75-84 groups seem to have experienced the steepest decline. inews.co.uk/news/analysis/…
If you break the data down by NHS region, London stands out as reducing the proportion of patients sent to ICU more than anywhere else. inews.co.uk/news/analysis/…