Coronavirus cases exploded in Europe during March 2020, when the first strain emerged from Wuhan, China. Scientists have devoted unprecedented time and resources to developing a vaccine. But as science adapts, so too does the virus, continually muddying the outlook for the UK and world at large.
Will the world ever be rid of Covid?
Life without Covid is now a distant memory for many people, who over the last year or so have only come tantalisingly close to the ‘normal’ last seen in early 2020.
Many people have adjusted to life alongside the disease, with masks and social distancing now integrated into society, but a sense of longing remains.
Vaccines have delivered a tangible way out of the pandemic, but questions remain around how often these are needed, and whether virus evolution can outpace them.
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He said: “I don’t think this virus is going anywhere, it’s going to stay around and therefore the answer is it’s going to be around, I think, forever as a virus, but it will be controlled.
“The key thing, I think, is to keep watching, measuring and assessing where we are and not getting too hooked up on specific dates, because we don’t know at the moment.
“We need to watch, wait, measure and release carefully as we go through it.”
Professor Whitty advocated the same path, but warned of potentially devastating outcomes for those who fail to follow.
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He said the UK may not yet have traversed the peak of local deaths.
The worst “may well be still in the future”, should people give up too soon.
Professor Whitty said: “If people took this moment and said, ‘right, it is over’, it would get back into very deep trouble very fast and the NHS is absolutely at the top of what it can manage.
“If that happened again, we would be in really, really deep trouble.”
The UK and world’s best hope to leave the pandemic are vaccination programmes.
Several countries, England among them, have now established highly effective plans to inoculate all of their most vulnerable people.
So far, nearly 5.5 million people have received their first of two doses, 10.2 percent of those aged over 18.
But only 466,796 people have had their second, meaning a comparatively small amount of the overall population has the highest possible immunity.