If there is one place in the world at the moment that you should be watching it is the UK.
It has the world’s highest full COVID vaccination rate:
53.2% of UK residents are fully vaccinated. 68.2% have received at least one vaccine dose.
And on Monday the UK declared ‘Freedom Day’, which lifted remaining COVID restrictions, including:
- face masks no longer legally required;
- work-from-home guidance ended;
- social distancing rules axed; and
- limits lifted on the number of people attending theatre performances or big events.
Over the past several days, large crowds have gathered across the UK from nightclubs:
Nightclubs are back in the UK.
To music festivals:
Crowds descend on the Latitude Festival at Henham Park.
The gatherings have prompted warnings from health experts that the UK faces an explosion in COVID infections that could overwhelm its hospital system.
So far so good, with new COVID cases actually declining over the past several days; although it is obviously too early to draw definitive conclusions:
UK COVID cases have fallen over recent days.
Nevertheless, active COVID cases continue to climb:
UK active cases still rising.
The hope is that because the UK is highly vaccinated, COVID hospitalisations won’t rise to such an extent that the health system becomes overwhelmed:
UK COVID hospitalisations remain low.
And that COVID death rates remain low:
New COVID deaths remain low.
If the UK successfully reopens without spiking hospitalisations and deaths, then it will show other nations that it is safe to reopen once the majority of the population is vaccinated.
It is early days, but so far so good.
