Government advisor states UK may have to live with coronavirus ‘for years’
As the British government gradually unpicks the lockdown there are growing fears the country may have to grapple with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, for years to come.
That was the message relayed by the deputy chief medical officer for England, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam.
Addressing the government’s daily coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, Van-Tam said that whilst the government is hoping to avoid a “second wave” of infections, the desired outcome is far from guaranteed.
Absent a development of a “really capable” vaccine, the country may have to live with the coronavirus “for many months, if not several years”, Van-Tam claimed.
Furthermore, England’s deputy chief medical officer raised fears by predicting that the autumn and winter months may prove a “better environment” for the virus to proliferate once again.
Van-Tam’s realistic assessment is bound to raise fresh doubts about the government’s current strategy of significantly relaxing the lockdown in the face of real fears about a second wave of infections, which could be just as deadly as the first.
The government’s convoluted strategy came into even sharper relief later on in the briefing when foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, conceded that different coronavirus rules had taken hold in different parts of the country.
Addressing a question about whether the relaxation of the lockdown in England was undermining efforts to keep it in place in north Wales (as per the wishes of the local administration), Raab conceded that people traveling from England to Wales had to be “very mindful” of the regulations they should be following.
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