The UK government is not expecting the COVID-19 pandemic to be declared over for at least another year, according to experts.
Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, told the i: “In a world where we have massively effective vaccines produced at scale, the answer should be simple: ending the pandemic is a function of getting R below 1, so that virus is present in ever fewer lungs, so giving less chance for new variants to arise.
“We are far from sufficient global vaccine coverage to achieve this – not an issue of supply shortfall but of equitable distribution and logistics.
“The current situation makes bleak reading: Western countries with around 75% having had at least one vaccine dose, but half the planet still unvaccinated and only 4% of low-income country populations having received a single dose.
“As things stand, I see this as an incremental war of attrition playing out over the next 18 to 24 months.”
Professor Matt Ashton, director of public health for Liverpool, also told the publication: “All pandemics come to an end eventually, and that is great because that gives us hope.
“But there is still massive uncertainty about how and when that is going to happen for COVID-19. We have got to get through winter, in terms of pressure on the health and care system.”
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