LONDON, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Britain reported another 7,490 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 4,565,813, according to official figures released Sunday.

The country also recorded another eight coronavirus-related deaths, bringing the total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain to 127,904. These figures only include the deaths of people who died within 28 days of their first positive test.

More than 41.5 million people have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine and over 29.7 million have received their second dose across Britain, according to the latest official figures.

Under the British government's roadmap, all legal limits on social contact could be removed on June 21 if the situation goes well. It is understood that a final decision on the planned easing of lockdown will not be made until June 14.

But, due to concerns about the rapidly spreading Delta variant (first identified in India), this is likely to be postponed -- possibly until the middle of July, Sky News reported on Sunday.

Sky News quoted Dr Raghib Ali, a government adviser on COVID-19, as saying that a delay to lifting lockdown is inevitable.

He also said that local hospitals are extremely busy at the moment, the emergency departments last month were the busiest they have been for years because of the huge backlog of patients that didn't come in during the previous waves.

There have been 42,323 cases of the Delta variant confirmed in Britain up to June 9, according to Public Health England.

To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Russia, the United States as well as the European Union have been racing against time to roll out coronavirus vaccines. Enditem

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