Islington Council’s public health director has extolled the effectiveness of the Covid vaccination programme, with the borough reporting the lowest infection rate in the capital.

According to Jonathan O’Sullivan, the positivity rate shown from the around 10,000 lateral flow tests showed up at less than 0.1 per cent locally, with hardly any admissions being seen at the borough’s hospitals.

The Whittington has averaged about one admission a week from Covid over the last three weeks, with no deaths from the virus in the last month.

Last week there were 10 cases per 100,000 people.

Mr O’Sullivan said: “That is really tremendous stuff, and is partly telling us about how hard everyone has worked to keep each other safe.

“It is also telling us something about the effectiveness of the vaccinations. We have had good news in the last week or so which tells us that the vaccinations are effective in real life.

“Unfortunately because it does not look like the vaccination completely stops transmission, we are likely to be living with the virus for some time, even if we get very high vaccination levels, and it is going to highlight the importance of following other safety measures at the same time.”