BRITS will be able to visit the pub and go shopping from MIDNIGHT on Monday when lockdown restrictions are eased up.
But Boris Johnson warned loosening restrictions is based on “data, not dates” – and said Brits “can’t be complacent”.
“We can see waves of sickness afflicting other countries, and we’ve seen how this story goes,” he added.
It comes as data released yesterday showed the number of Covid infections had faded to levels not seen since July 2020 – with cases more than halved in the space of a week.
Experts say there are now less than 2,000 symptomatic infections of the virus on a weekly basis.
Data from the ZOE Symptom Tracker app shows that in the last week 1,924 new cases of the virus were recorded, down from 4,152 daily cases a week ago.
That’s down 54 per cent in the last week and since January, infections have come down by 98 per cent, after reaching a peak of 69,000 new infections a day at the start of the year.
It comes as data shows the of developing blood clots from the AstraZeneca vaccine is tiny compared with everyday occurrences like flying or taking the contraceptive pill.
Dr June Raine, the chief executive of the MHRA, said: “From these reports, the risk of this type of rare blood clot is about four people in a million who receive the vaccine.”
This works out at a risk of one in 250,000, or 0.0004%.
The European Medicines Agency said that “frequency is difficult to assess” but added: “If you state the reporting rate is approximately one in 100,000 or even a little bit higher, that would reflect the risk”.
But it is important to put those numbers into perspective.
For example America’s National Blood Clot Alliance estimates that one in 1,000 women per year who are taking birth control pills will develop a blood clot, putting the risk at 0.1%.
And according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the annual incidence of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is estimated to be about one in 1,000 (or 0.1%),
That risk increases two to threefold in flights of more than four hours.
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