England reopened amid a Delta surge, then cases fell. Are there lessons for the U.S.? - NBC News

boasts one of the world's most successful campaigns, with more than 88 percent of adults receiving one dose, and 73 percent a second, according to government data as of Wednesday.

For the U.S., that drops to 70 percent for one dose and 60 percent for two — and rates are far lower in Southern states such as Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Experts were aghast when last month Johnson pressed ahead with "Freedom Day" — so named by the tabloid press — despite the United Kingdom suffering the world's highest daily infection rate at the time.

Some citizens responded with trepidation, particularly vulnerable people who felt allowing infections to rip through the country put them at risk because vaccines do not fully protect them.

Experts believe the tournament, coupled with a washout early summer, are two reasons cases rose sharply from late May to mid-July.

Even though the government's "wall of immunity" kept most vaccinated people out of hospitals and morgues, many critics worried that allowing cases to hit 200,000 a day (as one former top government scientific adviser predicted) could breed new variants and leave hundreds of thousands of people with long-Covid.

And in mid-July, just as daily cases hit 60,000, they began to decline.

has been nothing like its first two, which caused nearly 130,000 deaths and briefly the world's highest daily deaths per capita.

Whereas January's peak saw 80,000 daily cases and 1,300 daily deaths, July's peak of 60,000 daily cases brought no more than 78 deaths in one day.

Driving cases down further, many experts believe, was a brief spell of fine weather, coupled by hundreds of thousands of children being off from school because of infections or symptoms, or being told to isolate because of close contact with people who had tested positive.

Furthermore, many experts expect cases to rise again in the fall and winter, when kids return to school and adults huddle indoors to escape the worsening weather and Britain's long nights