This is the eye of the storm. We are being told the rapidly expanding vaccination programme will improve the situation in the near future but right now patient numbers are the highest they have ever been – at the time of writing over 37,000 are hospitalised and someone is admitted every 30 seconds.

There is no doubt the country is in a perilous position once again, and once again construction is working through it, encouraged to do so by a government that sees it as critical to the economy. As business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng pointed out in his open letter to the industry, there is a compelling case for keeping sites open, safeguarding workers’ jobs and driving economic recovery.

The latest figures show UK GDP dropped 2.6% in November while construction output grew 1.9%, its seventh month of continuous growth and above the pre-pandemic growth rate in February.

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