The UK is in the early stages of a third wave of Covid-19, a scientist advising the UK government said, media reports said on Monday, 31 May.

The B1617 variant, which was first detected in India in October 2020, had fuelled "exponential growth" and is responsible for at least three-quarters of cases in the UK, Ravi Gupta, a professor at the University of Cambridge, was quoted as saying by the BBC.

However, he said the number of people who have been vaccinated in the UK meant this wave would probably take longer to emerge than the previous ones.

"There may be a false sense of security for some time, and that's our concern," he noted, suggesting that ending Covid restrictions in the UK on 21 June should be postponed.

It should be delayed "by a few weeks while we gather more intelligence", said Gupta, a member of the UK government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag).

The UK's fight against coronavirus could turn bad "very, very quickly" unless the government acts cautiously on easing lockdown further, Xinhua news agency quoted Tim Gowers from the University of Cambridge telling the Guardian on Saturday, 29 May.

Anthony Harnden, the deputy chair of the UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI), also warned that the B1617 variant is "clearly more transmissible".

"We need to be reassured that we're in a very different position now in that we've got a highly vaccinated population and we just need to continue moving at speed," he told the BBC on Saturday, 29 May.

The final stage of the government's roadmap for lifting lockdown, which would remove all limits on how many people you can meet - either indoors or outdoors, is due no earlier than 21 June.

On Sunday, 30 May, the UK reported more than 3,000 new Covid infections for a fifth day in a row. Prior to this, the UK had not surpassed that number since 12 April, the BBC report said.

(This story was published from a syndicated feed. Only the headline and picture has been edited by FIT)