New coronavirus cases “could go as high as 100,000” a day after restrictions ease, the health secretary says.

The rollout of the vaccination programme has altered everything, reducing both the individual risk and the wider one to the health system.

Back in January, about one in 10 infections could be expected to translate into a hospital admission 10 days later. Now that figure appears to be somewhere between one in 40 and one in 50.

What is more, those ending up in hospital seem to be less sick, and need less intensive treatment.

The risk of death, as a result, has reduced even further. In January about one in 60 cases resulted in someone dying. Today it's fewer than one in 1,000.

This does not mean England - and the rest of the UK for that matter - is not heading for a significant third wave.

Infection rates are rising. If they rise enough, that has the potential to cause a significant number of hospitalisations, possibly 1,000 a day before summer is out.

But serious illness happens all the time. In the depths of winter there can be 1,000 admissions a day for respiratory infections.

Flu alone killed more than 20,000 people in England in the winter of 2017-18. There was no talk of the need to introduce restrictions or curtail freedoms then.

What if infection rates keep rising and that wall of immunity is slow to kick in?

Understandable concerns have also been raised about those who are at risk because they have conditions such as blood cancer which mean the vaccines do not work as well or who have a higher chance of exposure because of their jobs, such as shop or factory workers.

There is also Long Covid to contend with - although the risks of this are far from fully understood.

The UK is, perhaps, the first country to find ourselves in this situation, where it is attempting to return to normal in the face of a rapidly rising rate of infection and a more infectious variant, Delta.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

A further 28,773 confirmed cases in the UK were announced by the government on Monday .....

That's 186,422 in the last 7 days * .....

This might well be the calm before the storm .....

Oh but its alright, Omah....so long as nobody DIED, eh?

*Govt directed sarcasm, not you*

Well I just feel like they given up now. They can't contain it, so treat it like the flu. Most folk are vaccinated now, so even if they get it, they won't be that ill so, hey lets just carry on as normal.

It seems that BJ and his government are quite prepared to put up with 50,000 new cases and 1,000 new hospitalisations a day plus 20,000 extra deaths over winter so we've got nothing to worry about ..... there are always caualties when lions are led by donkeys .....

Aint that the truth!

The delay to ending quarantine for fully vaccinated contacts of people with Covid could lead to millions being asked to self-isolate this summer.

The knock-on for the economy and workplaces, including the NHS, could be huge, ministers are being warned.

The government says close contacts who are double-jabbed will not have to isolate after 16 August in England.

But BBC analysis shows more than 4.5 million people could still be asked to self-isolate between now and then.

A conservative guess is that we might see 1.5 million cases in the four weeks after 19 July - that would be just over 50,000 cases a day on average.

About three close contacts have been identified for every Covid case reported, according to Test and Trace figures for England in the last month.

So, 1.5 million cases, each with about 3 contacts, gives us between four and five million contacts who might be asked to isolate between 19 July and 16 August.

And, once restrictions are lifted on 19 July and society opens up further, we might expect to see the numbers of contacts to rise.

This is a very rough calculation. The true figures could, of course, be lower or even higher.

But it's looking increasingly clear that millions of people will be close contacts of people with coronavirus and legally required to self-isolate in the weeks before England changes the rules.