The UK's National Statistician says he has "no doubt" there will be a further surge in coronavirus cases in the Autumn, BBC reports.
Professor Sir Ian Diamond, the head of the Office for National Statistics, has been speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show.
Marr asked him about Professor Chris Whitty's assertion that another surge in hospitalizations and deaths due to coronavirus was "inevitable."
Prof Diamond says Prof Whitty is "someone I defer to on many things."
He says: "We do need properly to understand how the data is moving forward, and we need to be really looking at the impact of the wonderful vaccination roll out that we are seeing.
"But having said that, we need to recognize it's a virus that isn't going to go away, and I have no doubt that in the autumn that there will be a further wave of infections."
But he says the decreasing Covid case numbers show the UK is making "really, really good progress."
He says he will be "looking very carefully" at the data over the next few weeks and making sure policy-makers have all the information they need to make decisions about easing lockdown restrictions.
