Five milestones England will have to hit before lockdown can be lifted revealed

16 February 2021, 10:27

By Alice Dear

From progress with vaccines to infection rates and the number of deaths, these are the targets England must hit before lockdown can be lifted.

Next week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to outline his lockdown escape plan for England.

This will hopefully give some clarity to schools, the high street and the hospitality sector of when they can plan to reopen.

However, before lockdown can be lifted for the country, certain milestones have to be met in order to keep the virus under control.

READ MORE: Self-catering staycations 'could be allowed from Easter' if R rate stays low enough

Vaccines

So far, the vaccine roll-out has been highly successful in the UK, with a total of 15million people having received their first jab.

The Government have now outlined plans to have 32million adults jabbed by the end of April.

The more vaccines administered means more people are protected from the virus, which will lead to a lifting of lockdown.

Infection rates

At the moment, infection rates are falling in most areas across England.

Recent data from Public Health England revealed there was only a handful of areas that are seeing a rise in infections.

According to Professor Tim Spector, infection rates have dropped by 80 per cent since the New Year.

In order for lockdown to be lifted or eased, infection rates must be shown to be falling and remaining low.

Number of hospitalisations

One of the main reasons for enforcing lockdown was to ease the strain on the NHS, which is why hospital admission numbers are important to the Government and health experts when it comes to easing lockdown.

Last month there was reportedly around 37,000 people in hospital with the virus, with 4,032 of these on ventilators.

Since then, hospital admissions have fallen, with 23,341 people currently in hospital with Covid-19, and 2,943 on ventilators.

Deaths from virus

Of course, death rates need to be falling in order for the officials to consider easing lockdown.

In total, over 100,000 people in the UK have died from Covid-19.

In January, the UK saw over 1,000 deaths per day as the virus peaked again.

The most recent data shows that on Sunday, February 14, there has been 258 deaths.

The R rate

The R rate refers to the number of people someone with Covid-19 can pass the virus to.

Recent data showed that the R rate in the UK had fallen below 1, and currently sits between 0.7-0.9.

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