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.

The good news was overshadowed yesterday as the country moved past the grim milestone of over 100,000 deaths.

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.