THE Government should not rush into easing Covid-19 restrictions in England in July, but data is looking “encouraging”, an expert has said.

Earlier this month, concerns over the spread of the Delta variant led to Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushing back the June 21 target date to remove all legal limits on social contact to July 19.

Mr Johnson previously said there would be a two-week review after the June 14 delay announcement, with an update from the Government expected tomorrow.

Professor Sir Peter Horby, chairman of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said he would not bring the restrictions easing date forward, adding that it had been “very sensible” to delay it by four weeks.

He said: “We always have to be driven by the data, not the dates. I don’t think we should rush into anything, we really want to make sure that we can release all restrictions and not have to backtrack at all.”

His comments came as latest figures showed a near 60 per cent increase in infections over the last seven day period across the country.

In County Durham, the increase has been even greater with 1,943 people testing positive for the virus in the last week – up 928 and almost double the previous seven day period – and 322 of them in just the most recent 24 hours recorded.

That took the cases per 100,000 population to 267.

Across the county a number of school have closed or asked entire year groups to self isolate.

Earlier this week, Durham’s director of public health said most cases were among young and un-vaccinated people and urged residents to follow hands, face, space, fresh air and vaccination guidance.

Amanda Healy said: “While there is concern at the rise in cases, we know what the drivers are and we are monitoring it really closely. We are working really closely with Public Health England to put measures in place to start to contain that spread.”

In Darlington there were 263 new cases in the last seven days – just less than 222 per 100,000.

Cases in Newcastle and North Tyneside remain among the highest in the country and authorities across the Tees Valley and North Yorkshire have recently raised concerns, particularly about increasing cases of the Delta variant.

Government data shows that overall North Yorkshire fairs slightly better than the UK average, with 101 cases per 100,000 population.

Prof Horby, who is also professor of emerging infectious diseases in the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, warned that Covid-19 vaccinations have “weakened” the link between infections and hospital admissions, but this was not “completely broken”, with “breakthrough infections” still expected.

“As we see increasing infections, we will see increasing hospitalisations,” he said.

“But at this stage, we’re able to make sure that the health system isn’t overwhelmed and vaccination is really key to that.”

He warned that the route out of the pandemic would be “a bumpy road out and that there will be twists and turns that we’re not wishing to see”.

Today, NHS England said half of all adults under 30 in England had received a Covid-19 vaccine, with more than 4.2 million people aged 18 to 29 jabbed in three weeks.

Public health professor Linda Bauld told Trevor Phillips on Sky News that rising Covid-19 cases were a “cause for concern”.

She said: “The proportion of people going into hospital as a proportion of cases is far, far lower.

“For example at the beginning of this year it might have been ten to 15 per cent of people who would end up in hospital, now it’s about five per cent.

“If that trend continues then I think the Government is under a lot of pressure to stick with that date (July 19). But all the researchers and clinicians will be saying ‘let’s make sure the data is going in the right direction’ a week or two before then.”

Prof Bauld was asked whether there was a behavioural issue over putting the July 19 date “up in lights” and making it hard for the Government to change it.

She said: “I think the date thing is a problem. When you set a date like that people are looking forward to it. It’s a bit like going on holiday, you start to relax a bit before going on holiday, you anticipate it, you’re looking forward to it.

“I think people are thinking ‘if we’ve got that date it means we’re almost back to normal so if it’s almost back to normal, I might as well do these things now’.

“You can see from the ONS social impact survey that people’s compliance with distancing has declined, their contacts have gone up, of course, but more than we might have thought.”