Prime Minister Boris Johnson has resisted calls for compulsory face masks and vaccine passports despite warnings the United Kingdom could soon see COVID-19 cases hit 100,000-a-day.
The UK is currently battling the second-highest infection rate in the world, behind the United States, with more than 50,000 cases recorded on Thursday - the highest daily number since July.
On Friday, nearly 50,000 new cases were added, and 180 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, taking the overall toll since the start of the outbreak to 139,326.
High levels of infection among school-age children are said to be responsible for the soaring rates, and have prompted calls for some contingency measures to be reintroduced.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said this week that cases could hit 100,000-a-day, as a new advertising blitz was launched to encourage take up of booster shots and flu jabs.
The World Health Organisation's Emergency Director, Mike Ryan said more socialising indoors as winter sets in is driving a rise in infections in many countries across Europe.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been encouraging people to get their booster shots, shying away from mandatory indoor mask wearing. Source: AAP
Concern has also been raised about waning immunity levels, given that Britain started its vaccination campaign in December last year, before many other countries.
But Mr Johnson resisted calls from the British Medical Association to roll out compulsory mask wearing and vaccine passports, insisting that vaccination is the way out.
"We always expected that we would see numbers rise right about now. That is happening. You've got to take into account the waning effectiveness of the first two jabs," he said.
"People should be coming forward with the same spirit of determination to get their boosters as we saw earlier on this year. It's a very good thing to do. It gets you a huge amount of protection."
Delta subvariant investigated
British health officials on Friday said they were formally looking into a subvariant of the Delta strain of the coronavirus, after it was seen in a growing number of cases.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), a public health protection body, said AY.4.2, which was last week seen in six per cent of cases, had been "designated as a variant under investigation" but not yet a "variant of concern".
"The designation was made on the basis that this sub-lineage has become increasingly common in the UK in recent months, and there is some early evidence that it may have an increased growth rate in the UK compared to Delta," the agency said.
"More evidence is needed to know whether this is due to changes in the virus' behaviour or to epidemiological conditions," it added.
The UKHA said the Delta variant was "overwhelmingly dominant" in Britain, accounting for 99.8 per cent of all cases.
But as of 20 October, there have been 15,120 cases of the subvariant AY.4.2, which was first detected in July, as coronavirus restrictions were lifted across the country.
"While evidence is still emerging, so far it does not appear this variant causes more severe disease or renders the vaccines currently deployed any less effective," the UKHA said.
