Third wave of Covid in UK, expert urges to delay planned reopening [details]

Amid steady progress of vaccination rollout, a top medical expert in the United Kingdom has hinted that the country is facing the initial stages of the third wave of the Covid pandemic. Professor Ravi Gupta of the University of Cambridge, who is a member of the government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) has warned that the UK is in the early stages of the next outbreak, and he urged prime minister Boris Johnson to delay the planned June 21 reopening of the country by a few weeks. 

The third wave of Covid in the UK?

According to Gupta, nearly three-quarters of cases recently detected belong to the variant first detected in India. On Sunday, the United Kingdom witnessed over 3,000 fresh Covid cases, an all-time high since April 12. Even though the number of cases reported in the UK is very low compared to countries like India, Gupta warned that all the outbreaks start in small numbers before soaring to unimaginable levels. 

"Of course the numbers of cases are relatively low at the moment - all waves start with low numbers of cases that grumble in the background and then become explosive, so the key here is that what we are seeing here is the signs of an early wave," said Gupta, BBC reports. 

Experts urging to reconsider the reopening

Gupta is not the only expert who has urged Boris Johnson to delay the planned reopening on June 21. Recently, Prof Adam Finn, a leading scientific advisor to the government had also requested the government to reconsider the reopening date. 

According to the latest updates, more than 70 percent of the adult population in the United Kingdom had received at least one shot of the coronavirus vaccine. Gupta believes that the third wave in the country will take a longer time to emerge strongly due to these vaccination figures. 

The Covid pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China has infected more than four million people in the United Kingdom, and over 1,28,000 people have succumbed to the virus.