BRITS may be living with Covid like they live with flu by the end of the year, Matt Hancock has said.
The Health Secretary insisted we will “live our normal lives” and “mitigate through vaccines and treatments” if the bug is still with us next winter.
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Mr Hancock’s comments suggest he sees Britain living with Covid for the long-haul.
The health chief told The Telegraph: “I hope that Covid-19 will become a treatable disease by the end of the year.”
He added that new treatments will be crucial in “turning Covid from a pandemic that affects all of our lives into another illness that we have to live with, like we do flu.
“That’s where we need to get Covid to over the months to come”.
Meanwhile the minister vowed that every adult in the UK will be offered a vaccine “a bit before” September as the rollout of jabs continues to progress.
And he said the combination of vaccines and treatments – both those that exist already and new, targeted ones – will be “our way out to freedom and normal life”.
‘TREATABLE DISEASE’
Mr Hancock said: “If Covid-19 ends up like flu, so we live our normal lives and we mitigate through vaccines and treatments, then we can get on with everything again.
“I’m confident we can offer the vaccine to all adults by September.”
Listing the factors needed for the bug to become a “treatable disease” by the end of the year, Mr Hancock said a vaccine that “reduces hospitalisations and deaths” and “reduces transmission”.
Another factor was that “the vaccine is safe, which means that almost everybody can take it unless you have a very specific clinical condition”.
Thirdly, treatments must be available for “the small proportion for whom the vaccine does not afford that protection”.
Latest data up to February 11 shows 14,012,224 have now had their first dose of the vaccine.
Another 530,094 have been given their second.
It comes as the coronavirus R rate has dropped below 1 for the first time since July.
The official figure – which represents the number of people an infected person will pass Covid onto – is now between 0.7 and 0.9, Sage said today.
Levels haven’t been this low since July last year, fuelling hopes that lockdown restrictions could be lifted.
