MATT Hancock has appealed to Britons to keep abiding by the coronavirus rules, urging them “let’s not blow it now” as the statistics for infections, hospitalisations and deaths continue to fall across the UK.

Hailing the latest “exciting” data that suggests the two vaccines being used in the UK reduce hospital admissions in over-70s by 80%, the UK Government’s Health Secretary noted how the number of admissions to hospital was now falling faster than that of cases, particularly among the older age groups who were vaccinated first.

“This,” he declared, “is a sign that the vaccine is working.”

At a Downing Street press conference Mr Hancock said people must “keep sticking to the rules, let’s not blow it now”. But he noted how new data showed that “in the real world, across the UK right now, the vaccine is helping both to protect the NHS and to save lives”.

He explained: “A single shot of either the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine or of the Pfizer vaccine works against severe infection among the over-70s with a more than 80% reduction in hospitalisations.

“In fact, the detailed data show that the protection that you get from catching Covid 35 days after a first jab is even slightly better for the Oxford jab than for Pfizer, albeit both results are clearly very strong.”

The results, he said, “may also help to explain why the number of Covid admissions to intensive care units among people over 80 in the UK have dropped to single figures in the last couple of weeks”.

UK Government data up to February 28 showed that of the 21,091,267 jabs given in the UK so far, 20,275,451 were first doses; a rise of 185,900 on the previous day.

A further 104 people died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Monday – the lowest daily figure since October 26 – while there were another 5,455 lab-confirmed cases in the UK.

England’s Health Secretary defended the Government’s border arrangements following the detection of the cases of the worrying Manaus variant.

He said home quarantine measures were already in place and travel restrictions on Brazil had been imposed before the hotel policy was implemented.

“All the evidence is that the five cases that we know about followed those quarantine rules and that, I hope, is very reassuring to people.

“There is no evidence that the sixth case did not follow those quarantine rules – we need to obviously get in contact with the person in question,” said Mr Hancock.

The test was taken on February 12 or 13 and “we haven’t seen any further knock-on transmissions in the data”.

Public Health England[PHE] has identified six UK cases of the concerning P1 variant first detected in the Brazilian city of Manaus; three in Scotland and three in England.

The three Scottish cases are residents who flew to Aberdeen from Brazil via Paris and London, who all tested positive while self-isolating. Other passengers who were on the same flight to Aberdeen are now being traced.

The other two cases in England are from the same household in South Gloucestershire after one person returned from Brazil on February 10; just days before the Government’s hotel quarantine rule came into force.

Two other people in the same household have also tested positive but are not currently included in the UK case total of six, while tests on their type of coronavirus continue.

Officials are searching for passengers who were on the Swiss Air flight LX318 from Sao Paulo to Heathrow, via Zurich, which landed on February 10.

Dr Susan Hopkins, of PHE, said they were tracking “very closely” the new Brazilian P1 coronavirus variant following the discovery of six cases in the UK.

She told the press conference: “The current vaccines have not yet been studied against this variant and we will need to await further clinical and trial data to understand the vaccine effectiveness against this variant.”

Dr Hopkins said they were in the process of trying to track down the one person who had yet to be identified and who was believed to have taken a test on February 12 or 13.