We were always warned lockdown, which is under way in England, would take time to have an impact. The good news is that cases had started to stabilise before it came in, with strong evidence the regional tiers had begun to have an impact.
If the rise in cases on Thursday is a blip - there are suggestions it may be linked to a last bout of socialising before lockdown came in - the expectation is the number of infections will soon start to drop. Friday's figures were 6,000 cases down on the day before,
Prof Tim Spector, who runs the Covid Symptom Study, an app which one million people use, believes the crucial R number - the measure of how many people an infected person passes the virus on to on average - is now below one. This would mean the epidemic should start to shrink.
But no-one knows exactly what sort of impact lockdown will have. There have been suggestions the number of infections could be reduced by three-quarters.
But the early evidence from Wales' 17-day fire-break is that it stemmed the rise in cases rather than significantly shrinking it. There could be a delayed impact and England's lockdown is longer, but clearly nothing is guaranteed.
the most important part has to be linked to last minute socialising ….