Third Wave? Zero Daily Coronavirus Deaths Recorded in the UK For First Time Since Pandemic Began

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Kurt Zindulka

The United Kingdom has recorded zero daily deaths from the Chinese coronavirus for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic.

In a major subversion of recent claims by government scientists that the nation is on the verge of a coronavirus third wave — a claim which has been used to promote cancelling the end of lockdown — there were no deaths recorded within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test on July 1st, government data revealed on Tuesday.

Deaths from the Wuhan virus spiked in the UK on January 19th of this year, when 1,358 people were recorded to have died after testing positive for COVID-19.

Since then, the death rate has seen a steady decline amid a widely adopted vaccination programme, with just 43 people dying after testing positive in the entire country over the past week. Deaths have been in single figures daily on many days in the past weeks.

The government data also revealed that an additional 93,103 Britons received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, taking the total number of people who have had at least one jab to 39,477,158.

Some 195,546 received their second dose on Monday as well, meaning that 25,734,719 people in the UK have been fully inoculated against the coronavirus.

There were 3,165 new coronavirus cases recorded in the past 24 hours in Britain, however, there were only 133 hospitalisations recorded during the same time period.

The positive news comes amid a battle being waged in the media about whether Prime Minister Boris Johnson should delay scrapping the remaining lockdown restrictions, which are set to be lifted on June 21st.

New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) member Professor Ravindra Gupta warned on Monday that lifting the lockdown restrictions in combination with the so-called Indian variant of the virus could trigger a “third wave” of the coronavirus.

“I think that people are not saying we should abandon the June 21 date altogether but just to delay it by a few weeks while we gather more intelligence and we can look at the trajectory in a clearer way,” Gupta said.

The statement sparked widespread clamouring from mainstream media outlets amplifying the call for Boris Johnson to scrap plans for the “freedom day”.

On Tuesday, the government’s business minister, Paul Scully, said that there is “cautious optimism” that the government will follow through on its promised end date to the draconian lockdown restrictions.

“One thing that we saw last year, before Christmas, was the stop-start nature just didn’t work for businesses and cost them more. So we’ve got to get it absolutely right. People’s jobs and livelihoods depend on it,” Scully said.

A Downing Street spokesman said: “The prime minister has said on a number of occasions that we haven’t seen anything in the data but we will continue to look at the data, we will continue to look at the latest scientific evidence as we move through June towards 21 June.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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