Although the number of deaths reported today is higher than 915 the day before, the average for the past seven days is 987 and the number of infections has dropped from 20,634 on Thursday and 29,079 from last Friday.

On Wednesday, 30,508 infected with covid-19 were hospitalised, of which 3,628 were in intensive care with a respiratory ventilator, but the number of hospitalised patients dropped significantly, compared to 35,466 who were in hospital for treatment for a week.

Scientists estimate that the effective transmissibility index (Rt) in the UK has dropped to between 0.7 and 1.0 which means that virus transmission is no longer growing exponentially as before.

"These estimates mean that we are now confident that the epidemic is decreasing in England, although it is important that everyone remains at home to keep Rt low," the British Ministry of Health stressed about the confinement in place since early January.

The number of people vaccinated with a first dose is very close to 11 million, while 506 thousand have already received a second dose.

Today the British Government has shown confidence that all adults in the UK over 50 can receive a first dose of an anti-covid-19 vaccine by the end of May.

Those over 50 are the last of nine priority groups identified for the first phase of the British vaccination campaign that started in December, which in total represent about 32 million people in the United Kingdom.

The first goal is to start vaccinating by February all the approximately 15 million people that make up the first four groups, namely residents and workers in nursing homes, over 80, health professionals, over 70 and clinically very vulnerable.

The priority list, based mainly on age groups and serious health problems, was drawn up by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization, JCVI, based on the risk of mortality and need for hospitalization.