Northern Ireland's Health Minister has said that while "good progress" is still being made in the pandemic, the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 "remains high", and there is "slight growth" in case numbers again.
Robin Swann told a Stormont Health Committee that if "increasing social contact goes again too quickly, we may find ourselves back in the cycle that we've seen, but we know the rollout of the vaccination programme continues to make good progress and is expected to have a substantial impact on the epidemic in the medium to longer term." He said the planned inoculation of those aged 50 and over in April will be a "monumental step in a population-wide vaccination programme".