The infection rate of Covid-19 seems to be on decline
and the trend has been consistent for the past few days in the United Kingdom
so that the inhabitants can breathe a collective sigh of relief.
As of yesterday, the 7-day-average of infections and
the 7-day-aveage of the deaths are 35929 and 1239 respectively.
There is no doubt that the strict lockdown measures
and masking up the population are working, although a significant opposition
exists against the moves.
It is too early to gauge the effect of the
accelerated vaccine programme in bringing down the dreadful numbers, though.
The decline in rate of infection is bigger than that
of deaths; most of the deaths have occurred in care homes which house the
elderly – the most vulnerable group in the pandemic.
The British government hopes the lockdown may be
eased before the Easter in proportion to the indicators of success of
controlling the outbreak.
There is noticeably less traffic on the roads and I hardly
notice airplanes in the skies around Heathrow.
The presence of vehicles may increase in the coming
weeks if infection rate continues to fall and the rate of deaths declines too,
if people maintain social-distancing guidelines while wearing masks in public.
As for air travel, it will take a few months for
passengers to feel safe inside airplanes before booking holidays.
That means, there is no hope for the travel industry
get back to where it was at the beginning of the last year – any time soon. The
demand for jet fuel will suffer as a result.
The demand of petrol and diesel, however, will
recover, if the optimism of controlling the second wave of the pandemic returns
to the public psyche.
