A quick update on today's figures, focusing on England. A number of places have now gone below 400 case per 100k per 7 days in the last few days. The larger cities involved are Manchester, Birmingham, Doncaster, Wakefield, Bradford, and Leicester - Leicester like Oldham and Blackburn also had very high infection rates earlier in the pandemic. So again I think immunity levels are showing up now. Some lower tier local authorities in the South East have gone blue too, notably Epping Forest and Castle Point. Tomorrow at least 4 London boroughs will go below 400 and these are considered upper tier authorities. Only one of the traditional Shire counties has gone blue so far, that's Lancashire, Cumbria and Leicestershire probably the next in a few days. The England rate is officially 594, my unofficial calculation to take account of today's figures is 479. A week ago the official rate was 873.

However there are a few signs in the UK wide figures that the speed of reduction is relenting a bit. It's still a decline, but not as fast as before. I think that's because that some places in Southern England and Scotland are not declining as fast as the north of England, and now these southern counties have more weight in the figures. But it's still a general reduction more or less everywhere, apart from a few places in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is now showing an increased pace of reductions even though it's a bit spotty.