Hello and welcome to more or less, the programme that never says,

next slide please, until it's had a jolly good look at the numbers on the first slide.

I'm Tim Halford. This week, the vaccine rollout continues,

how long will it take before we see the benefits and what benefits will we see?

The data suggests that the UK's economy performed worse than almost anywhere during the lockdowns,

but are the numbers misleading us? And sugar and tea and rum also fish.

But first, on last week's show, we painted a pretty grim picture of the situation the UK was facing.

Now there may be signs that things are turning a corner. My producer Kate Lambel is with me, hello, okay?

Hi Tim, yet, cases certainly seem to be falling. I like to look at seven day averages because

reported daily case numbers jump about a lot. And on the first of January, the seven day average

number of daily positive samples was just over 61,000. On the 11th of January, it was just under

45,000. Well that's good news, but we know there are some limitations on the number of cases we

discover in the community. So are other numbers giving us a similar picture? Well the trend has

always been cases fall first, then admissions, then deaths. Hospital admissions may have peaked,

but it's too early to be sure. And they really need to start falling because they're still at a

level, which is around two to three times as high as a month ago. It's not clear that deaths have

peaked. The worst recent day was the 11th of January. When 1,064 people died within 28 days of a

positive COVID test, that's getting closer to the first wave peak. Okay, good news on cases,

grim news on deaths, but we would expect that if cases are falling, then eventually deaths will fall

too. And there's another source of hope, the vaccine. Now last week, we noted that the government

was on course to vaccinate the top four priority groups, which include everyone aged 70 or over,

only by July. So if they wanted to hit their target of doing so by mid-February, they were going

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