Warning people they would need to follow the guidelines, Jonathan Van-Tam said: “We have got to start taking this very seriously again”.

“If we’re not careful we’re going to have a bumpy ride, people have relaxed too much,” he said.

The United Kingdom recorded 2948 daily confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Monday.

Daily case numbers had been rising at about 1000 a day for most of August but have started to increase in recent days.

Britain’s testing capacity has also increased since the peak of the first wave earlier this year.

The United Kingdom has suffered more than 65,000 excess deaths from coronavirus, according to the government’s statistics office, with a surge that lasted longer and spread to more places than those in other hard-hit European countries like Italy and Spain.

India’s coronavirus cases have surged to 4.2 million – the second-highest total in the world – while Spain has became the first country in western Europe to register 500,000 infections.

The 90,802 cases added in the past 24 hours pushed India’s total to 4,204,614, passing Brazil which has more than 4.1 million, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

More than 6.2 million people in the United States have been infected.

India’s health ministry on Monday also reported 1016 deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, taking fatalities to 71,642, the third-highest death toll in the world.

Amid a surge in cases, India continues to reopen, except in high-risk areas, to heal the battered economy which is still reeling from the effects of a prolonged lockdown.

The Delhi Metro transit system that serves India’s sprawling capital New Delhi and adjoining areas resumed operations on Monday after five months.

Masks, social distancing and temperature checks were mandatory.

India says it is now conducting 1 million tests daily but the virus is reaching cities and towns previously spared, offsetting marginal declines in some states.

India has been recording the world’s largest daily coronavirus caseload for almost a month even as the government pushes to open businesses to revive a contracting economy.

Meanwhile, Spain recorded 500,000 coronavirus infections on Monday after a second surge in cases that coincided with schools reopening.

Health ministry data showed a total of 525,549 cases, up from 498,989 on Friday, and 2440 infections registered in the last 24 hours.

Spain updates its data retroactively, so the latest numbers could be revised.

Recent infections have been more common among younger people who often develop no symptoms thanks to their stronger immune systems, and the death rate remains far below the March-April peak when daily fatalities routinely exceeded 800.

Despite the unwanted milestone, unlike then, Spanish hospitals have enough beds to treat COVID-19 patients.

But French doctors have raised the alarm that nearly all the intensive care beds reserved for COVID-19 patients are in use in and around the city of Marseille.

The Marseille Hospitals Medical Commission President Dominique Rossi told BFMTV on Monday that of the 70 designated intensive care beds in the Bouches-du-Rhone region, “between 65 and 67” are currently occupied.

New daily infections in France have averaged at more than 5000 in recent days, raising fears of a second wave of the virus.

South Korea added 119 more cases of the coronavirus on Monday, its lowest daily jump in more than three weeks amid a downward trend in new cases.

The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the additional figures took the country’s total to 21,296 with 336 deaths.

It’s the fifth straight day the country’s daily jump has stayed under 200.

The rise in cases in August, many of them associated with churches, restaurants and schools and an anti-government street rally in the greater Seoul area, has largely been slowed thanks to toughened distancing rules and bans gatherings at churches, night spots, after-school academies and fitness centres.

Globally, more than 27.19 million people have been reported to be infected by the coronavirus and 888,326​ have died.

-with AAP