IT is a fabulous effort by the local NHS, the vaccine manufacturers and indeed the Government that more than 900,000 people in the North-East have been vaccinated and, with a mass vaccinating venue opening at Darlington’s arena, the 1,000,000th should get jabbed this week.

But, it is clear that our control of our borders was not complete three weeks ago – as we warned in this column. We accept that things have tightened since, but it is staggering that 10 months into the pandemic and given the hugely computerised age in which we live, we are not able to trace everyone who was on Flight LX318 on February 12 from Zurich.

The country was in lockdown, and yet our borders were so porous that people slipped in from countries like Brazil that were known to have much higher rates of infection.

But are we still in lockdown? The roads in our area over the beautiful weekend seemed busy, and beauty spots were pretty crowded. On such rare sunny occasions, it is difficult to stay indoors, and we must trust that even though people were out and about, they really were keeping their distance.