London: A British government advisory scientist has stated that a new wave of coronavirus infections is "definitely underway" in England due to the Delta variant of Coronavirus.


"The race is firmly on between the vaccine program... and the Delta variant third wave," said professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) as quoted by Xinhua news agency.



This comes as Britain reported more than 10,000 coronavirus cases for the third consecutive day on Saturday while a 79 percent rise in Delta variant cases was recorded in the past week.


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Acknowledging the recent surge in infections, Finn told the BBC: "Perhaps we can be a little bit optimistic it's not going up any faster, but nevertheless it's going up - so this third wave is definitely underway."


While the highest number of the Delta variant cases is among 16-25 year-olds, he cautioned that older people are still "much more likely to end up in hospital".


"As far as vaccines are concerned, the main emphasis everywhere at the moment is immunizing adults because it's adults that suffer predominantly from this infection," he said.


Meanwhile, epidemiologist Mike Tildesley who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), another government advisory body, said that cases have been "creeping steadily" over the past month "but we haven't yet seen that reflected in hospital admissions and deaths".


"I'm cautiously hopeful that whilst we probably will expect some sort of wave of hospital admissions over the next few weeks, it won't be the same scale that we saw back in January."


More than 42.4 million people have been received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine and more than 30.8 million people have been fully vaccinated with a second dose, the latest official figures informed.


Britain reported another 10,321 coronavirus cases in the latest 24 hours, taking the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 4,620,968.


14 coronavirus-related deaths were recorded in the country and the cumulative toll in Britain now stands at 127,970. While a 79 percent rise of cases was recorded with respect to the highly contagious Delta variant, Britain is encouraging younger age groups for vaccination as the rollout covers people aged 18 and over.


(With Agency Inputs)