He said population immunity thanks to vaccines and infection was ‘keeping the virus at bay’
An expert has said that the UK could be one of the first countries to emerge from the covid-19 pandemic, suggesting that the disease is starting to become endemic in the country.
On Tuesday, the UK recorded 379 covid deaths, which was the highest daily figure since February 2021. However cases are continuing to fall across the nation, with just over 120,000 recorded on the same day.
Professor David Heymann, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), said the UK is starting to see signs of the disease becoming endemic and is likely to have one of the highest levels of population immunity in the world.
He told a Chatham House online briefing that the pandemic would not be declared over across the globe “until all countries have completed what they need to do to make this virus more tame and to become endemic.”
He said: “In general, now, the countries that we know best in the northern hemisphere have varying stages of the pandemic.
“And probably, in the UK, it’s the closest to any country of being out of the pandemic if it isn’t already out of the pandemic and having the disease as endemic as the other four coronaviruses.”
He said population immunity was already high, adding: “That means immunity against serious illness and death after infection if one is vaccinated, or after re-infection if one has had illness before, and that population immunity seems to be keeping the virus and its variants at bay, not causing serious illness or death in countries where population immunity is high.
Prof Heymann quoted figures from the Office for National Statistics which estimated that “about 95 percent of the population of England ” have antibodies against the virus thanks to either infection or vaccination.
He said this is what is “keeping the virus at bay” and helping it function “more like an endemic coronavirus than one that is a pandemic.”
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Prof Heymann added that only those without antibodies from infection and vaccination were getting seriously ill, saying that the “majority” of those in intensive care are not vaccinated.
His views echo those voiced over the weekend by another expert.
Over the weekend, Dr Mike Tildesley, from the University of Warwick, described the Omicron variant as a “possible first ray of light” in the pandemic, and said that there could be a shift in the pandemic by the spring.
He told Times Radio: “The thing that might happen in the future is you may see the emergence of a new variant that is less severe, and ultimately, in the long term, what happens is Covid becomes endemic and you have a less severe version. It’s very similar to the common cold that we’ve lived with for many years.
“We’re not quite there yet but possibly Omicron is the first ray of light there that suggests that may happen in the longer term. It is, of course, much more transmissible than Delta was, which is concerning, but much less severe.”
