Wednesday 22 July 2020

Coronavirus: 'Infection here for many years to come'

The UK will be living with coronavirus for many years to come and even a vaccine is unlikely to eliminate it for good, experts are warning.


Wellcome Trust director Prof Sir Jeremy Farrar told the House of Commons' Health Committee "things will not be done by Christmas".


He went on to say humanity would be living with the virus for "decades".


It comes after the prime minister said last week he hoped for a return to normality by Christmas.


Boris Johnson made the comments as he set out plans to further ease restrictions, including the opening of leisure centres and indoor swimming pools later this month and the prospect of mass gatherings being allowed from the autumn.


But experts giving evidence to the cross-party group of MPs said it was important to be realistic that the virus would still be here.


Reuters


Sir Jeremy, a member of Sage, the government advisory body, said the world would be living with Covid-19 for "very many, many years to come".


"Things will not be done by Christmas. This infection is not going away, it's now a human endemic infection.


"Even, actually, if we have a vaccine or very good treatments, humanity will still be living with this virus for very many, many years.... decades to come."


He urged against complacency during the summer, saying the period was a "crucial phase" to prevent a second wave.


"If we have any sense of complacency of 'this is behind us', then we will undoubtedly have a second wave, and we could easily be in the same situation again."


He said it was important to further build up testing capacity as well as investing in treatments and vaccines.


Vaccine 'unlikely to have durable effect'

Prof Sir John Bell, of the University of Oxford, said he thought it was unlikely that Covid-19 would ever be eliminated despite the positive news announced on Monday that trials by his university had triggered an immune response - an important step in developing a vaccine.


"The reality is that this pathogen is here forever, it isn't going anywhere," he told MPs.


"Look at how much trouble they've had in eliminating, for example, polio, that eradication programme has been going on for 15 years and they're still not there.


"So this is going to come and go, and we're going to get winters where we get a lot of this virus back in action.


"The vaccine is unlikely to have a durable effect that'll last for a very long time, so we're going to have to have a continual cycle of vaccinations, and then more disease, and more vaccinations and more disease.


"So I think the idea that we're going to eliminate it across the population, that's just not realistic."


Chief adviser defends government record

The government's chief medical adviser was also quizzed by MPs.


Prof Chris Whitty was asked at length about the UK's record so far in tackling coronavirus.


He defended moves to end attempts at trying to contain the virus in March, while defending the actions of ministers accused of announcing lockdown too late.


Crucial evidence about the scale of the outbreak and modelling about how quickly it could spread was presented to ministers on 16 March.


But it was a full week later that a total lockdown was announced.


Prof Whitty said it was not a "huge delay" given the "enormity" of the decision.


He also pointed out that others steps were taken in the meantime, including the closing of schools.


Meanwhile, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has defended the government's record on testing - and his decision to set the target of providing 100,000 tests a day by the end of April.


The move has been criticised with some describing it as arbitrary.


But Mr Hancock told the Science and Technology Committee, which was sitting after the Health Committee, that it was important because of the need to "scale up" at an unprecedented speed.


"The point of the big, hairy, audacious goal is to say to the whole system, 'this is where we're going, you do your bit, let's get there'."


UK coronavirus statistics:

  • 45,422 people had died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK as of 5pm on Monday, up by 110 from the day before
  • Separate figures published by the UK's statistics agencies show there have now been 56,100 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate
  • In the 24-hour period up to 9am on Tuesday, there had been a further 445 lab-confirmed cases. Overall, a total of 295,817 cases have been confirmed since the outbreak began


(Source: BBC)


1 comment:

  1. �� ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY IN NEED OF THE SERVICES OF A PROFESSIONAL HACKER?(CATCHING A CHEATING SPOUSE[Phone Hack], RECOVERY OF LOST FUNDS, CREDIT SCORE UPGRADE, WEBSITE HACK...)
    High prolific information and Priviledges comes rare as i would be sharing with you magnificent insight you wish you heard years before now. As it's been understood that what people don't see, they will never know.
    When you wonder “which hacking company should I hire, the first aspect that should concern you is quality. Clearly, you want to embark for services that povides swift response, Thanks to our talented and Astonish Hackers , you are rest assured that your expectations will always be met. You’ll be glad to find out that our services Implies precisions and actions.
    This post is definitely for those who are willing to turn their lives around for the better, either financial-wise, relationship-wise or businesses.
    Welcome to the Global KOS hacking agency where every request on hacking related issues are met within a short period of time.
    If your shoe fits in any of the required services below, you will be assigned to a designated professional hacker who is systematically known for operating on a dark web V-link protocol.
    The manual Operation of this hackers is to potentially deploy a distinguished hacking techniques to penetrating computers and various type of database system to meet your request.
    Penetration of computing systems are achieved using core software tools like Ransomeware, SQL/Keylogger injection. botnet, trojan and DDOS attacks.
    Providing value added services to clients as a hacker has been our sustaining goal.
    Are you faced with cyber challenges like
    ��Recovery of lost funds:✅It saddens our mind when client expresses annoyance or dissatisfaction of unethical behaviours of scammers. We have striven to make tenacious efforts to help those who are victims of this flees get off their traumatic feeling of loss. The cyber security technique used to retrieving back the victims stolen funds is the application of a diverse intercall XX breacher software enables you track the data location of a scammer. Extracting every informations on the con database, every requested information required by the Global KOS would be used to tracking every transaction, time and location of the scammer using this systematic courier tracking base method.
    �� Hacking into the mobile phone of a cheating spouse.✅ This type of hack helps you track every movement of your cheater as we are bent on helping you gain full remote access into the cheater's mobile phone using a Trojan breach cracking system to penetrate their social media platforms like Facebook, whatsapp, snapchat etc. This spy processing is used via an HDSI folder which synchronizes the target mobile operating system into a clone S-Drive unit.
    ��Credit Score Upgrade:✅Due to our transformed changes on Equifax tracking , upgrading of credit score are backed by our cyber tech breaching licence, This hacking process drastically generates you an undestructive higher credit score which correlates to a higher level of creditworthiness. The time frame for upgrading a credit score requires eighteen(18) hours
    ��️ BITCOIN GENERATOR:✅ (Higher job profile). This involves using the ANTPOOL Sysytem drifting a specialized hardware and software implementing tool in slot even-algorithms to incentivize more coins into your wallet which in turn generates more coins exponentially like a dream at specified intervals.
    The company is large enough to provide comprehensive range of services such as.
    • Email hacks��
    • Hacking of websites.��
    • Uber free payment hacks.��
    • website hack.��
    Our strength is based on the ability to help you fix cyber problems by bringing together active cyber hacking professionals in the GlobalkOS to work with.
    Contact:
    ✉️Email: clarksoncoleman(at)gmail • com.
    Theglobalkos(at)gmail •com.
    ®Global KOS™
    Copyright® 2030.•√

    ReplyDelete