pandemic may no longer be spreading exponentially in the UK, according to government data suggesting the country’s third lockdown is working.The official estimate of the “R rate" -- which measures how many people each infected person passes the virus on to -- fell to between 0.8 and 1, the results released on Friday showed.
When R is above 1 the virus spreads exponentially.The data will provide some welcome news to Boris Johnson’s government, which was forced to put the country into another lockdown at the start of January after a highly infectious new strain of the disease took hold.This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.