Johnson has lifted restrictions in England and is betting he can get one of Europe's largest economies firing again because so many people are now vaccinated, a decision which marks a new chapter in the response to the novel coronavirus.

The number of new daily COVID-19 cases has fallen each day for the last six days, though Johnson stressed the pandemic is not over, Reuters reported.

"I've noticed obviously that we're six days into some better figures, but it is very, very important that we don't allow ourselves to run away with premature conclusions about this," Johnson told broadcasters, noting it would take a while for the lifting of restrictions in England to feed through to the data.

"People have got to remain very cautious and that remains the approach of the government."

Imperial College epidemiologist Neil Ferguson said the end of Britain's pandemic could be just months away as vaccines have so dramatically reduced the risk of hospitalization and death.

"We're not completely out of the woods but the equation has fundamentally changed," Ferguson, whose modelling of the virus's likely spread at the outset of the pandemic in early 2020 alarmed governments across the world, told the BBC.

Johnson lifted COVID-19 restrictions in England on July 19. New daily cases in the current wave peaked two days earlier at 54,674 and have since fallen dramatically to 24,950 new cases on Monday.

The closure of schools for the summer holidays, the end of the Euro 2020 soccer championships and warmer weather are among factors epidemiologists say might have reduced social mixing indoors and therefore cases, even as England's economy has fully reopened.

While the number of COVID-19 patients in British hospitals has risen to 5,238, a spike in infections earlier in July has so far not led to a vast increase in deaths, which fell to 14 on Monday.

Britain has one of the highest official death tolls from COVID-19 in the world, with 129,460 deaths, but vaccinations and lockdown measures have greatly slowed the rate of deaths since March.

Ferguson said the impact of vaccines on reducing the risk of hospitalization from COVID-19 had been huge, adding: "I'm positive that by late September, October time we will be looking back at most of the pandemic."

Case numbers have been falling for longer in Scotland, where the recent peak in cases was on July 1, than in England, corresponding to an earlier elimination from the Euros.

"From a sporting perspective [...] Scotland went out far too early, but epidemiologically that probably did us some favors," Scotland's National Clinical Director Jason Leitch said.

 

School reopening

Meanwhile, schools closed due to the coronavirus pandemic must reopen as soon as possible, the United Nations insisted Tuesday, estimating that the education of more than 600 million children was at stake.

"This cannot go on," James Elder, spokesman for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), told reporters in Geneva, as quoted by AFP.

While acknowledging the difficult choices that governments have to make when facing the COVID-19 crisis and the possible spread of the disease, "schools should be the last to close and the first to reopen," he said, calling it a "terrible mistake" to reopen bars and pubs before schools.

"Reopening schools cannot wait for all teachers and students to be vaccinated," he added, calling on governments to protect their education budgets despite the economic hardship caused by the pandemic.

While children in the northern hemisphere are on their summer holidays, in eastern and southern Africa, an estimated 40 percent of school-age children are currently out of school.

Across that region, schools are being closed due to COVID-19 surges, with more than 32 million children estimated to be out of school due to pandemic-related closures or having failed to return after their classrooms reopened.

That comes on top of the estimated 37 million children who were out of school before COVID-19 struck.

In nearly half the countries in Asia and the Pacific, schools have been closed for more than 200 days during the pandemic.

In South America and the Caribbean, there are 18 countries and territories where schools are either closed or partially closed, Elder said.

Around the world, "education, safety, friends and food have been replaced by anxiety, violence, and teenage pregnancy", he said.

Citing Uganda, he said that between March 2020 and June 2021, there was a more than 20 percent increase in pregnancy among 10 to 24-year-olds.

Remote learning remains out of reach for a third of pupils around the world, UNICEF said.

In southeast Asia and the Pacific, 80 million children had no access to remote learning while their school was closed.

Schools in Uganda were closed for 306 days with only 0.3 percent of households having an internet connection.

According to a World Bank study, the pandemic will cost this generation of students $10 trillion in lost income, Elder said.