A SCIENTIFIC adviser to the Government has repeated calls to delay the June 21 lifting of pandemic restrictions by “a few weeks”, warning that the ability of coronavirus to adapt in the face of vaccines has still left the UK in a vulnerable position.

Professor Ravi Gupta, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said the UK’s pandemic picture had changed since its road map to recovery was drawn up, chiefly through the emergence of the Indian of B1617.2 strain of the virus.

He also warned the increased socialisation following last month’s easing of restrictions could lead to “quite a lot” of hospital admissions, and said while Britain had performed “amazingly well” in its vaccination programme, it was still too early “to put the vaccine straight up against the virus”.

Prof Gupta told ITV’s Good Morning Britain moving back the June 21 target date could have a significant impact on the fight against the pandemic, adding it should be made clear to the public this would be a temporary measure based on recent developments.

More than 39 million people have been given a first jab and a further 25.3 million have had both doses.

Asked whether a three-week delay to the June 21 target would be sufficient while Britons were being vaccinated at a rate of four million per week, Prof Gupta said: “Even a month delay could have a big impact on the eventual outcome of this.

“As long as it’s clear to people this is not an unlimited extension of the lockdown but actually just a reassessment, that would be realistic.

“Because we didn’t plan for the 617.2 variant when the initial road map was made, and actually things have gone really well except for the fact that we have this new variant to complicate things.

“We must remember this is a virus that does adapt, and faced with vaccines it will eventually start to make mutations to avoid them even further, and then we could be in an even more precarious situation after that.”

Prof Gupta said the UK was in “a really good position” in regard to its vaccination programme but caution remained crucial.

“The key thing here is that we’re almost there,” he said.

“The problem is we don’t want to put the vaccine straight up against the virus at a time when the vaccine coverage isn’t quite high enough; it’s not in young people, it’s not in schoolchildren, and that’s where the virus may potentially start circulating.

“We still have a lot of vulnerable people in the community who haven’t responded to the vaccine.”

Prof Gupta said it was concerning that hospital admissions could be about to rise following last month’s easing of restrictions, at a time when hospitals were dealing with large backlogs of procedures and treatments delayed because of the pandemic.

“If we’re fully unlocked on the 21st of June, we have a situation where over the next few weeks there will be a lot of mixing, there will be gatherings, because people have been waiting to do these things for a long time,” he said.

“So we will get an excess of mixing, especially in younger groups, and that will lead to some hospitalisations… quite a lot, at a time when the NHS is trying to distance within hospitals, so it does take time to get things done there, and the added pressure of having Covid cases, some of which will be severe of course, is going to have an effect on morale and clinical care for everybody.”

Former chief scientific adviser to the Government, Professor Sir Mark Walport, said that more data was needed before the final decision could be made about the June 21 easing of restrictions.

“We need to substitute speculation for scientific data that’s the truth of the matter, as everyone has said in the last few days, the situation is very delicately balanced with some three sets of moving parts,” he told BBC Breakfast.

“Firstly we have got a new more transmissible variant, of that there is no doubt, though we don’t know exactly how much more transmissible.

“Secondly, there’s been a change in behaviour following the relaxation of measures on May 17, and the effects of that will just be starting to come through.

“And thirdly, we’ve got a vaccination programme that is very successful, but with a lot of people that still need both their second dose of vaccine and vaccination from scratch.

“I’m afraid that weeks before the Prime Minister has to make the difficult decision it is going to be necessary to bring in the data.”

Meanwhile, Robert Dingwall, professor of sociology at Nottingham Trent University, said that it was important to press ahead with the June 21 easing from a societal point of view.

He told Times Radio: “I personally, I don’t see any case for delay… from a societal point of view, I think it’s really important that we go ahead on June 21, and I’ve not really seen anything in the data that would lead me to doubt that as a proposition on the evidence to date.

Prof Dingwall added: “I think we need to recognise the way in which levels of fear and anxiety in the population have been amplified over the last 15 months or so.

“We’ve got to look at the collateral damage in terms of untreated cancers, untreated heart conditions, all of the other things that people suffer from.

“We’ve got to think about the impact of economic damage that would be caused by further periods of delay and uncertainty.

“What we see at the moment I think is really a preview of what it means to live with Covid as an endemic infection – these waves will come, they will pass through; there will be high levels of mild infections in the community for periods of time, a handful of people may be seriously ill, even fewer may die.

“But that’s what happens with respiratory viruses, and we’ve lived with 30-odd respiratory viruses for since forever.”