After almost four months of being under some form of lockdown restrictions, on Thursday people in Greater Manchester will learn what life will look like in the run-up to Christmas.
Ministers will decide then - using the latest data available - what tier we will be placed into after national lockdown ends on December 2.
In a conurbation where most communities have been under a range of different measures non-stop since July 31, some may be hoping for a significant easing of the rules, especially after what will have been a month of national lockdown.
Sadly that looks unlikely, although in theory it is possible the rules could vary by borough.
For while government has said gyms, places of worship and non-essential shops will reopen on December 3, it’s safe to say Greater Manchester will exit straight into either tier two - which the Prime Minister announced this afternoon will be tougher than previously, meaning pubs would have to close unless they serve substantial meals - or the top-level tier three.
The new, stricter rules now planned for tier three, described as now being effectively ‘tier four’ by some, mean all hospitality would have to close, including restaurants, other than takeaways. That represents a key toughening of the rules we experienced here before national lockdown.
Which of the two levels we are placed in depends on how the data looks on Thursday, with government watching several key measures, the most crucial of which are infection rates, the direction of travel - how fast those rates are rising or falling - and the situation in hospitals, in particular their bed capacity.
For Greater Manchester there are some positives to be taken from the graphs in recent weeks.
Infection rates in every one of our ten boroughs began to fall in unison during the national lockdown, the first time that had happened since early summer.
Every council area in the conurbation has seen a decline in case rates of at least a fifth over the past week, according to the M.E.N’s analysis of yesterday’s figures, with some dropping by more than a third in that time.
Trafford's have seen a particularly substantial reduction, having almost halved since October 23. But even aside from that, numbers have been dropping across the piece now for nearly a fortnight.
Nevertheless they remain high.
Even in Trafford, which has the lowest rate of the ten boroughs, more than 200 people per 100,000 are still testing positive for the virus. For context, when Greater Manchester was placed into restrictions at the end of July, Trafford’s rate was 42.7.
Oldham was recording 54.3 cases per 100,000 when July’s measures were brought in.
And while its rates have fallen substantially from more than 750 cases per 100,000 in the past three weeks, the rate still stands at 442 - almost ten times higher than July.
So cases are down and dropping, which will be a positive for Greater Manchester when ministers are weighing up the data, but they are not low.
Rochdale and Oldham rank 11th and 12th respectively out of the UK’s 200-plus upper-tier local authority areas, for example.
Only Trafford is below - just - the national average for England.
What about pressures in hospitals, the big underlying concern for ministers?
The picture may now be ‘stabilising’, according to Andy Burnham at his regular press conference last Wednesday, after several weeks of acutely rising pressures that have seen the system pass its April peak and cause non-urgent and routine work cancelled across the board in order to free up beds.
Last week’s figures showed a slight drop - of 6pc - in the number of new patients with coronavirus being treated within the hospital system here.
But there is no doubt it remains under severe strain. The number of Covid patients in intensive care and high dependency beds had risen by 24pc last week and reports of extremely long waits at A&E departments continue to abound.
Summing up the picture ministers will be considering later this week, one senior figure said: “They’re taking into account the trajectory of infection rates, which is coming down.
“But our NHS capacity is still tight.”
There is a second unknown, too: the footprint on which the newly strengthened tiers will be applied.
Summer saw considerable wrangling - both internally among Greater Manchester’s leadership, between MPs and councils, and with ministers - over the ‘hokey cokey’ of changing measures in different boroughs.
It is understood government may again choose to apply the latest measures by local authority area, meaning there’s a theoretical chance some parts of Greater Manchester end up in tier two, while others enter tier three.
This afternoon in the House of Commons, Matt Hancock was asked whether ‘consideration would be given for variations across big counties and regions’ where the Covid picture was concerned.
“When it comes to the geography of the application of the tiers, of course we’ve got to look at the areas in which people live and travel, but as previously, where it’s clear... there’s a genuine difference that isn’t represented by administrative boundaries, then we will look at that and make a decision on that basis,” he said.
“For instance in previous tiers we even split a borough in two in one example. But nevertheless you do also have look at where people live and travel in order to get these decisions right.”
That could leave the door open for variations by local authority area. Yet having said that, Greater Manchester’s hospitals operate as one system, sharing patients according to where there are pressures - and infection rates remain high in every borough.
So, once again, Greater Manchester awaits a Thursday decision on Covid restrictions that will have a bearing on millions of lives and livelihoods. But even if we leave into tier two, we will still see any pub that doesn’t serve a ‘substantial meal’ keep its doors closed.
And one senior health official echoes many others in the system when they predict, firmly: “We’ll be in tier three.”
