SCIENTISTS have rejected a senior Tory minister’s claim that Covid-19 is about to “drop into the background”.

An anonymous minister told the Daily Mail that the pandemic is “all over bar the shouting” as the UK saw new infections fall from a recent high of 40,000 per day.

However, coronavirus cases are still at their highest point since January with 23,511 recorded yesterday.

Yesterday also saw the highest number of deaths recorded for four months, with 131 fatalities announced.

The newspaper’s front page quoted the senior minister claiming that with the vaccination programme’s success, Covid-19 is unlikely to “change anything terribly” from now on.

"It is all over bar the shouting, but no one has noticed,” they claimed. “Of course we have to guard against the emergence of some terrible new variant. But otherwise Covid is on the point of becoming something you live with.

"It drops into the background, but it does not change anything terribly – maybe you have to take a test once in a while."

The comments were rejected by a Sage adviser this morning who clarified that the Covid-19 crisis is not over “quite yet”.

Professor Mike Tildesley, an infectious disease modeller at Warwick University, suggested a decrease in positive cases could be the result of people avoiding testing prior to their summer holidays.

School closures could mean fewer cases being picked up by lateral flow devices too, he explained.

“I think people are aware that Covid isn't quite over,” he told Times Radio.

“I really hope that this is the turnaround of the third wave and as we get towards the autumn we really are very much getting back to normal.

“But I think, actually, people are doing pretty well at using their own judgment and exercising caution when necessary.

“It's pretty clear that we are not back to kind of pre-pandemic levels of mixing — people aren't socialising in the same way they were before the pandemic, hopefully that will come.”

READ MORE: Sainsbury's Aberdeen store sorry for broadcasting English mask rules to customers

He added that the key is to monitor hospital admissions before any conclusions can be drawn about where we are in the crisis.

Professor Neil Ferguson has also said while things are looking “positive”, the pandemic is not over.

Others were angry about the casual language. “’All over bar the shouting’, try telling that to the families who lost a loved one yesterday,” noted one Twitter user.

There were also questions over why the minister chose to speak anonymously if they were so confident about the pandemic being close to finished.

Meanwhile, speaking to LBC, Boris Johnson said while data was encouraging “it is far, far too early to draw any general conclusions”.

“The most important thing is for people to recognise that the current situation still calls for a lot of caution and for people just to remember that the virus is still out there, that a lot of people have got it, it still presents a significant risk,” he added.