Speaking to Sky News, Data and Economics Editor Ed Conway said at the rate the UK is going with coronavirus cases, the country could potentially be on track to hit "maybe 1,000 hospitalisations a day by July 19". His stark warning comes as lockdown in England is due to be lifted on July 19th and most coronavirus restrictions are set to be scrapped on what is being dubbed 'Freedom Day'. But fears are rising as the Delta variant is spreading quickly amongst communities up and down the country.

       Mr Conway said: “The numbers are going up at the moment and what you can see certainly looking at case numbers is they are climbing relatively steadily right now.

       “It’s not a surprise, we have seen this for quite some time.

       “But they are following more or less the path that looks pretty obvious from a week ago which is to say that they are going up exponentially

       “And it looks like by July 19… those case numbers will be very high indeed.

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       “And that might be very unnerving not just for the government but for the rest of us.

       “Because we are likely, just looking at the latest numbers, potentially up above 70,000 at that point on July 19.

       “The big question though is what happens not just to cases but hospitalisations and deaths.

       “Last time around in the previous waves we saw cases go up sharply and hospitalisations up more or less at the same rate.

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       “Now due to the vaccine programme you would have expected that that might have been weakened and that does seem to be the case.”

       But he stressed hospitalisations were not going up “as quickly as they were” in previous spikes during the pandemic.

       He warned: “The question is the extent to which that continues."

       And in a stark warning, he added: "The way things are going at the moment... it looks like we are heading up to maybe 1,000 hospitalisations a day by July 19."

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       On Sunday, July 11 the UK recorded a further 31,352 coronavirus cases.

       While there were a further 26 deaths of people who died within 28-days of a positive coronavirus case.

       In the last seven days there have been 221,752 coronavirus cases recorded in the UK.

       45,881,721 Britons have received at least one dose of a covid vaccine while 34,764,511 have received both doses.