Some cautiously optimistic news to start your morning off with: the rate of growth for hospital admissions of Covid-positive patients in London and the South East has fallen for the first time before the Christmas relaxation, which in the words of the Health Service Journal, is “the first substantive indication that the third wave may have peaked in two of the regions where it began.”

The rolling seven-day hospital admission rate in the capital on January 10^th was 5,919 a fall of 131 on the previous day; and the 8^th and 9^th of January saw increases of just 17 and 4 respectively. This is the reason many Tory MPs will be demanding No. 10 doesn’t launch a new swathe of anti-freedom lockdown measures…