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According to the latest Government figures, the UK has recorded 28,773 new cases of the virus. This comes just a day after Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the July 19 ‘Freedom Day’ will go ahead in England.

The Government also said a further 37 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Tuesday, bringing the UK total to 128,268.

It is the highest daily figure for deaths within 28 days of testing positive since April 23, when 40 were reported.

Separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics show there have been 153,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.

This comes as 79,302,857 Covid jabs have been given in the UK so far.

At least 45,428,681 were first doses – a rise of 76,962 on the previous day.

Some 33,874,176 were second doses, an increase of 147,814.

This worrying rise of new Covid cases comes after Mr Johnson said: “If we can’t reopen our society in the next few weeks…when will we?”

Freedom Day on July 19 in England will sweep away compulsory face masks on public transport and in shops, plus the limits on indoor and outdoor gatherings and rules on social distancing in pubs and restaurants.

Addressing the nation yesterday, Mr Johnson said: “We will move away from legal restrictions and allow people to make their own informed decisions about how to manage the virus.

“We must be honest with ourselves that if we can’t reopen our society in the next few weeks, when we will be helped by the arrival of summer and by the school holidays, then we must ask ourselves when will we be able to return to normal?”

He added: “To those who say we should delay again – the alternative is to open up in the winter when the virus will have an advantage or not at all this year.”

However, Mr Johnson warned the pandemic is “far from over” and there could be around 50,000 new cases each day by July 19.

He said: “I want to set out what our lives would be like from the 19th of this month – which is only a few days away – if and when we move to step 4 – a decision we will finally take on the 12th – and I want to stress from the outset that this pandemic is far from over and it will certainly not be over by 19th.

“As we predicted in the roadmap we’re seeing cases rise fairly rapidly – and there could be 50,000 cases detected per day by the 19th and again as we predicted, we’re seeing rising hospital admissions and we must reconcile ourselves sadly to more deaths from Covid.

“In these circumstances we must take a careful and a balanced decision.

“And there is only one reason why we can contemplate going ahead to step 4 – in circumstances where we’d normally be locking down further – and that’s because of the continuing effectiveness of the vaccine roll-out.

“When we paused step 4 a few weeks ago, we had two reasons. First, we wanted to get more jabs into people’s arms – and we have, with over 45 million adults now having received a first dose and 33 million a second.

“That is a higher proportion of the adult population of any European country except Malta, and our expectation remains that by July 19 every adult will have had the chance to receive a first dose and two thirds will have received their second dose.

“And second, we wanted a bit more time to see the evidence that our vaccines have helped to break the link between disease and death.

“And as the days have gone by it has grown ever clearer that these vaccines are indeed successful with the majority of those admitted to hospital unvaccinated.”

Health Secretary Sajid Javid admitted cases could reach as high as 100,000 when England eases lockdown measures.

He told the Today Programme: “It is fair to say what you just said, I just said in Parliament yesterday, by the time we get to the 19th, we expect case numbers to be at least double what they are now, so around 50,000 cases a day.

“As we ease and go into the summer, we expect cases to rise significantly and they could go as high as 100,000 case numbers.

“We want to be very straightforward about what we can expect in case numbers but what matters more than anything is hospitalisation and death numbers.

“That is where the link is severely weakened.”

More to follow…

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