The first day without deaths in the UK for a year is certainly a red letter moment; hopefully there will be more.

What this one statistic does is to change the seven day rate of increase in deaths to a rate of decrease of 10% - 43 deaths over the past seven days. New cases is a different though with an increase of 32% to 24090 and this is the item of grim reading.

The political result of these figures is that the Prime Minister thinks we are still on course for the end of the month but will not commit himself, saying that it will be down to the experts. In others words, we are on the cusp of needing an extension. Of worse news is that the language used suggests that we shall be moving countries from the green list towards amber and red, rather than the other way around so far as foreign travel is concerned.

The prospect of foreign holidays this year therefore recedes a little more. Don’t get your hopes up.

The figures for the world as a whole have ascended into almost meaningless realms – 172 million total cases now recorded and over 3.5 million deaths. Of the 202 countries listed on the Johns Hopkins site, 76 continue to show a weekly increase, 1 no change and the remainder a reduction in new cases. So it could go any way and what is causing anxiety in the UK is the Indian variant.

What we do not wish to see is another new variant.

What the people can be forgiven for now is having no real idea of how this is going to play out and while the owner of Ryanair might say on television that everything needs to be opened up, I respectfully suggest that is because he wants to get his business going again rather than his worries about the safety of the general and travelling public! Are we fooled?

You will less likely to be disappointed by opting for a staycation – what about the beautiful Lake District?

Adrian Leopard 02-06-21

Photo Drew Collins