Coronavirus infections have finally started falling according to the biggest national swab testing survey. The REACT study by Ipsos Mori and Imperial College London took 168,000 swabs and identified a fall from January 15 to 22.
Its latest two-week snapshot of infections in England put the R value at 0.98 for the full period from January 6 to 22. It comes as the Welsh government announced that its reproductive range - the average number of people each case infects - was between 0.7 and 0.9.
The data suggests the devastating winter surge in infections could finally be shrinking, however England’s average is driven by falling rates in the south.