LONDON, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Another 5,177 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 4,218,520, according to official figures released Sunday.
Owing to processing issues for deaths in England, the numbers of deaths throughout Britain will be updated later, according to an official statement published on the government website.
The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain stood at 124,419 on Saturday. These figures only include the deaths of people who died within 28 days of their first positive test.
Meanwhile, more than 22.2 million people in Britain have been given the first jab of the coronavirus vaccine.
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock has confirmed that two-fifths of Britain's entire adult population of have now been vaccinated and the government is "on course" to offering a first vaccine dose to all adults by the end of July.
On Feb. 22, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his long-anticipated "roadmap" exiting the lockdown. Schools in England will reopen from Monday as first part of the four-step plan, which Johnson said was designed to be "cautious but irreversible".
Experts have warned that Britain is "still not out of the woods" amid concerns over new variants and the risks of the public breaching restriction rules.
"We have done fantastically well in the last couple of months but we are not completely out of the woods yet," Ian Diamond, the chief of the British Office for National Statistics (ONS), said Saturday.
"I'm in very much the view that we should do everything we can not to blow it nationally," Diamond added.
England is currently under the third national lockdown since outbreak of the pandemic in the country. Similar restriction measures are also in place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the United States have been racing against time to roll out coronavirus vaccines. Enditem
