CNBC reports that the head of Germany’s public health agency warned that a third wave of coronavirus infections has already begun.

It comes at a time when the country has started to gradually relax lockdown restrictions, amid a government-led effort to speed up its vaccination roll out to as many adults as possible.

Italy, meanwhile, is reportedly set to impose another near national lockdown over the Easter weekend in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. The move, which is expected to be signed into law on Friday, comes just over a year after it became the first country in the world to impose nationwide lockdown measures.

“We have clear signs: The third wave in Germany has already begun,” Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases, told.

“The virus is not going to disappear, but once we have a base level of immunity in the population, we can control it,” he added.