The weekly number of coronavirus deaths in the UK hit its highest number since March on Tuesday, but it is still well below the peak seen during the second wave in November.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid sent shockwaves through the country last month with his harrowing warning there could be up to 100,000 daily cases in the summer.
But the current situation seems much more promising than that as current daily infections are just a quarter of that amount.
So where are we heading? Is the UK finally freeing itself of a virus that has plunged millions across England into three national lockdowns since March last year?
A total of 404 deaths registered in the week ending July 30 mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
This is up 24 per cent on the previous week and is the highest number since 719 deaths were registered in the week to March 26.
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Despite the numbers climbing, they still remain considerably lower than the daily 1,820 recorded on January 20, at the height of the second wave.
It is also much lower than the 1,224 deaths recorded on April 21 last year, the deadliest day in the UK during the first wave of Covid.
The number of coronavirus cases has also crept up by 14 per cent in a week with 25,161 daily cases reported on Monday, but that was slightly down on Tuesday at 23,510.
But again it's much lower than the 68,053 recorded on January 9, just two days after Prime Minister Boris Johnson plunged the country into a third national lockdown.
It's also a drop compared to the 33,470 cases seen in November, when Brits' freedoms in England were restricted yet again under a second national lockdown.
After a temporary drop in the number of daily cases in April and May this year, the UK started seeing a resurgence of Covid caused by the Delta variant, a more transmittable strain of the virus.
It caused a four-week delay to the government's fourth step to ending lockdown, so-dubbed Freedom Day, which ended up taking place on July 19 instead of June 21.
As lockdown has ended and most restrictions on social contact have effectively been put to an end, numbers have continued to rise, up to a recent daily peak of 54,674 on July 17.
The latest figures reflect the impact of the third wave of Covid-19, which began in the UK in May and led to a sharp increase in the number of new cases of coronavirus as well as a smaller rise in hospital patients.
The number of new cases, however, has fallen in recent weeks but this is yet to be reflected in the data for deaths, due to the length of time between someone getting Covid-19, becoming seriously ill and then dying.
While in a promising sign that the virus may finally be leaving us, infections have now slashed by almost half compared to those seen in mid-July.
Leading diseases expert, however, have warned that another lockdown could be an option in the future.
Professor of infectious disease epidemiology Mark Woolhouse urged the government to keep the possibility of future restrictions on the table.
In an interview with Times Radio, the University of Edinburgh scientist said: "For people like myself, trying to advise the government on how to proceed and how fast to unlock, this determination to never go backwards is actually quite unhelpful.
"It inevitably makes the advice more cautious. Because if we can't go backwards we're very, very cautious about unlocking.
"What I think we need, because we're dealing with a novel virus with still uncertain potential, and we don't know how much this thing will evolve in the future, is to leave the door open to responding in whatever way is necessary in the future.
"I very, very much hope we won't have to go backwards, at least not too far, but I think we have to have that possibility, and keep it open just in case there is a public health emergency that none of us have foreseen at this stage."
Meanwhile, separate reports have revealed that the government had made "contingency plans" for further lockdowns if the NHS was to become overrun.
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A source told the i that ministers and experts remain confident that the vaccine roll-out has broken the back of the pandemic.
That was corroborated by expert and former government scientific advisor Neil Ferguson, who predicted the bulk of the pandemic will be behind us by the autumn.
The epidemiologist, who was behind the first lockdown last year, said at the end of July that the vaccine roll-out had “fundamentally changed the equation”, with around 70 per cent of adults double-jabbed. That number has now gone up to 75 per cent.
We spoke to a range of experts to find out if they believe we could soon put the worst days of the pandemic behind us – or if we’re facing yet another false dawn.
You can see what they have to say on the fall of Covid here.
