The UK Health Security Agency will stop publishing modelling data on coronavirus in early January.

The chief data scientist, Dr Nick Watkins, said the publication of this specific data is “no longer necessary” as the country is living with Covid thanks to vaccines and therapeutics.

The R range and growth rate for England had been published weekly during the height of the pandemic, and fortnightly since April this year. It was first published in May 2020 for all of the UK, until April 2021 when it was published for England only.

The reproductive rate, the R rate, refers to the number of people an infected person will pass the virus onto.