Covid-19 could impact daily life for another ten years, a top British politician has warned.
The impacts of Covid could still last another 10 years in the UK, the nation’s education secretary has warned.
Covid cases dropped for the fifth day in a row in Britain as experts who warned of a spike in Omicron deaths admitted they had been wrong, The Sunreported.
And Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said there was hope on the horizon as he became the first Cabinet minister to back cutting the self-isolation period from seven to five days.
The minister revealed hopes the country is on its way to leaving the grim days of lockdown and the pandemic behind it after appearing to pass the peak of the latest wave of cases.
Speaking on Sky on Sunday, he said: “I hope we will be one of the first major economies to demonstrate to the world how you transition from pandemic to endemic, and then deal with this however long it remains with us, whether that’s five, six, seven, 10 years.”
Experts have suggested the deadly bug could soon be like the common cold by spring – with data suggesting 98% of Brits have ‘some form’ of resistance to Omicron.
And Nadhim Zahawi hinted steps were being made to loosen the current restrictions – the same day as travel rules were eased to allow Brits to take lateral flow tests instead of PCRs after arriving in the UK.
The former vaccines minister told The Sunday Times that cutting the isolation from seven to five days for Brits who had tested positive for Covid would be “more helpful” after a string of NHS trusts declared emergencies over staffing shortages.
Experts on Saturday told The Sun Online the UK is emerging as one of the most immune countries in the world.
There have been a total of 141,472 cases reported in the UK on Sunday after the 146,390 people reported on Saturday when Covid deaths passed the grim milestone of 150,000.
But experts who had initially warned Britain needed to impose harsh measures or face thousands of deaths due to Omicron have now admitted they were wrong.
Modellers who advise the Government admitted that winter deaths by the new strain would be “substantially” lower than they had anticipated, mainly because the strain is less deadly as they thought, Mail Online reports.
Dr Nick Davies and his team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine built the original models assuming Omicron was equally lethal to the Delta strain.
He said: “We now know that doesn’t seem to be at all the case, as people are ending up in hospital with Omicron, but they are not requiring critical care [to the same extent as with Delta]”
“The deaths number will come down very substantially [compared with original estimates].”
He added: “It’s clear that our understanding of Omicron has changed substantially in the last two weeks.”
It comes as a string of hugely positive studies show Omicron is milder than other strains, with the first official UK report revealing the risk of hospitalisation is 50 to 70 per cent lower than with Delta.
Covid booster jabs protect against Omicron and offer the best chance to get through the pandemic, health officials have repeatedly said.
NEW NORMALITY
Other experts have also called for a “new normality” and a focus on disease management to allow people to get back to a normal life.
Dr Clive Dix, former head of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, said: “It is pointless keeping giving more and more vaccines to people who are not going to get very ill. We should just let them get ill and deal with that.
“We need to analyse whether we use the current booster campaign to ensure the vulnerable are protected, if this is seen to be necessary. Mass population-based vaccination in the UK should now end.
“We now need to manage disease, not virus spread. So stopping progression to severe disease in vulnerable groups is the future objective.
“We should consider when we stop testing and let individuals isolate when they are not well and return to work when they feel ready, in the same way we do in a bad influenza season.”
Another top doc has ruled out a “big rise” in hospital admissions and deaths from coronavirus as he said case rates may be stabilising across the country.
Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter told Times Radio: “The cases are not going up as fast as they were and may have stabilised over the whole country, but at very high levels and they’re not going to come down rapidly.
“We’re certainly not going to see a big rise in intensive care admissions and deaths and those really severe outcomes.”
Asked whether Boris Johnson had taken a “gamble” in resisting lockdown measures over the festive period, he replied: “It was a gamble, and you know, all I think the best we can say is he may have got away with it, but we’re going to have to see the next few weeks”.
And the Health Secretary has slammed “anti-vaccination fanatics” after he revealed that nine out of ten Covid patients in ICU have not had their booster jab.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Sajid Javid said that a “shocking 70 per cent of Covid patients taking up beds in intensive care were unvaccinated…” before branding “disappointing” that tennis star Djokovic is “fuelling scepticism” about the vaccines.
Originally published as Covid-19 could be around ‘for another 10 years’, UK warns
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