Professor Karina Butler:

The answer to that is in the decline in numbers of hospitalisations and in severe illness and death. That is the far end of the wedge but it shows that the vaccine programme is working and that people are developing protection against severe illness and death, which was the target of the vaccination programme. Public Health England did antibody testing throughout the population and data just released within the last week show that about 90% of the population there have some level of antibodies, either from natural infection or from vaccination. With our very high vaccination rates we can assume that, at least in our adult population, we are reaching levels of immunity and protection against severe illness and death as was hoped for.