While most British people support the lockdown, they will still be keen to know when the epidemic has reached its peak. Well, they don’t need to wait any longer – the answer is in. Data suggests that the UK is most likely over the peak. Christian Yates writes in The Conversation that data released by NHS England, in which deaths are aggregated by the date of death rather than the date of reporting, shows a clear decline in recent days. “While the figures are subject to constant revision, the numbers are starting to give us a coherent picture of the shape of the epidemic,” he writes. “Knowing that we have passed the peak is important because it shows that we can, with great effort and sacrifice, bring this disease under control.” He notes that the numbers are not always clear, for several reasons: there are large numbers of different sources for the figures in the U.K.– the different branches of the NHS, government websites and the Office for National Statistics – all of whose figures differ slightly. A more obfuscating factor is the lag between people dying and their deaths being reported. In rare instances, this can be as long as a month, although the vast majority of deaths make their way into the government’s daily totals within a week. And even when these daily numbers are reported by date of death (as in the NHS numbers in the top figure), there are reasons to doubt that they are a true reflection of the number of deaths. “Still, being over the peak is indisputably positive news,” he notes. “Although not cause for celebration, reaching the plateau is perhaps cause for a somber degree of relief.”