BRITAIN is no longer in a Covid-19 pandemic, data has shown.
The UK's vaccination rollout has cut symptomatic infections by 90%, and coronavirus has now dropped to the third biggest killer in the country, behind heart disease and Alzheimer's/dementia.
A new study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, is based on data from the national Covid Infection Survey run by the University of Oxford and the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Sarah Walker, professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at Oxford and chief investigator on survey, said Britain had "moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation."
She said she was "cautiously optimistic" that the vaccination programme could keep Covid under control.
Professor Walker attributed falling cases over the last three months had been due to both the lockdown and vaccines.
"Long-term lockdown isn’t a viable solution so vaccines are clearly going to be the only way that we are going to have a chance to control this," she said.
"But I think the challenge is that, as demonstrated in India, in Canada and Brazil, the virus is very good at throwing us curveballs.
"And so I think we’re always looking at one small step away from potential for things to go wrong again."
Britain was the first nation in the world to clinically approve a Covid-19 vaccine. In December last year, the country's rollout began, and has remained one of the most efficient in the world ever since.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced earlier this year that all Covid-19 public health measures will be dropped on June 21.
