Christmas Eve saw confirmation that the UK has now seen more than 100,000 cases of the Omicron Covid-19 variant - and 3,630 of them have been in the North East.
When you add in suspected cases, there have been 7,700 in our region.
All over the country, the festive period has seen the number of positive cases continue to rise - with the new variant thought by experts to be more transmissible than previous strains of Covid.
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In the last fortnight, Omicron has rapidly become the dominant form of the virus, and it is now thought to make up 86.2% of cases in England, and 72.1% in the North East.
The first case in the UK was recorded less than a month ago on November 27.
The rise in the Omicron variant saw Boris Johnson announce a massive increase in the Covid-19 vaccine programme.
In total, as of Christmas Eve, there had be 126,746,831 vaccine doses given in the UK.
On Christmas Eve itself, an extra 639,480 were recorded across the country.
Yesterday, in his Christmas message, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "Though the time for buying presents is theoretically running out, there is still a wonderful thing you can give your family and the whole country, and that is to get that jab, whether it is your first or second, or your booster.
""So that next year's festivities are even better than this year's."
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