Coronavirus cases fall across England ahead of lockdown easing announcement
Coronavirus cases have declined strongly across England since January, according to the latest study, suggesting that the current lockdown measures have worked to drive infection rates down.
The study, known as REACT-1 and led by researchers at Imperial College London, found that national prevalence was two thirds lower between 4 and 13 February than it had been between 6 and 22 January.
The latest figures showed that 51 per 10,000 people were infected, down from 157 per 10,000 in the January survey.
It is taking 15 days for infections to halve.
The figures have been published days before the Prime Minister is due to set out a roadmap for exiting the current lockdown.
Boris Johnson is due to announce how restriction will be eased on Monday, and has said that it will be a cautious and prudent approach.
Prevalence fell across all age groups, dropping from 0.93 per cent to 0.30 per cent among the over 65s, although the researchers said they did not have evidence that this was being driven by the vaccine rollout, which has been targeted at older groups.
Professor Paul Elliott, director of the programme at Imperial, said: “These encouraging results show that lockdown measures are effectively bringing infections down. It’s reassuring that the reduction in numbers of infections occurred in all ages and in most regions across the country.
“While the trends we’ve observed are good news, we need to all work to keep infections down by sticking to the measures which are designed to protect us and our health system.”
Health secretary Matt Hancock added: “These findings show encouraging signs infections are now heading in the right direction across the country, but we must not drop our guard.”