UK Scientists Urge Caution Over Lockdown End Amid Covid Third Wave Fears

Professor Ravi Gupta, an Indian-origin scientist from Cambridge University, said that while the infection rates in the country currently remain low, the B1.617.2 variant, first identified in India and now renamed as Delta, has led to an exponential rise in case numbers in recent days.

Scientists in the UK have urged the government to exercise caution when making a decision about a scheduled June 21 timeline for an end to all lockdown restrictions amid growing fears on Tuesday of a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Professor Ravi Gupta, an Indian-origin scientist from Cambridge University, said that while the infection rates in the country currently remain low, the B1.617.2 variant, first identified in India and now renamed as Delta, has led to an exponential rise in case numbers in recent days. He advised a few weeks' delay to the June 21 date to allow the vaccination programme to catch up with the highly transmissible variant of COVID-19. There's been exponential growth in the number of new cases and at least three quarters of them are the new variant, Mr Gupta told the BBC.