Fears of a surge in cases following the 19 July 'unlocking' are receding, but has the threat gone?
When the government in England announced it was lifting nearly all remaining restrictions, it was branded aBut now - just two weeks on from the 19 July unlocking - both infections and now hospital admissions are falling.
The hardest thing for them to predict was people's behaviour. At the start of July the number of contacts people were having was still much lower than pre-pandemic - four a day compared with 10 previously. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said cases could reach 100,000 a day, while Prof Neil Ferguson, one of the key modellers, said there could be 200,000 cases.
"We messed up the communication about masks," said one government source. "We had ministers claiming they were ditching them - it was giving the wrong impression when we needed the public to remain cautious.The falls are, of course, very encouraging. There have been a lot of theories put forward as to why - from the European Championship football tournament ending, to the sheer numbers of people being "pinged" and being asked to isolate.
Prof Christina Pagel, a member of Independent Sage and one of the signatories of the letter which branded the unlocking dangerous and unethical, says she is very concerned about what the autumn will bring. "August is a really odd month in terms of contact patterns, but given the success of the vaccination programme I think we can be pretty confident," he says.
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