A scientist has warned Brits could face a "pretty miserable winter" with further lockdowns on the cards but we could be back to "business as usual" next year.
Professor Calum Semple, member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), which advises the Government, said that children and elderly people will be vulnerable to endemic viruses towards the end of the year.
This is because social distancing as reduced everyone's exposure to the usual endemic respiratory viruses so there could be a rise in bronchiolitis, and a rise in community acquired pneumonia in children and in the frail elderly.
Professor Semple called it the "fourth wave winter" but added it would be much milder than the previous ones.
Another health expert and Government advisor warned that there may be the need for winter lockdowns if hospitals become "overwhelmed" at some point.
Speaking to Times Radio this morning, Professor Semple said: "I suspect we'll have a pretty miserable winter because the other respiratory viruses are going to come back and bite us quite hard. But after that, I think we'll be seeing business as normal next year.
"There's a sting in the tail after every pandemic, because social distancing will have reduced exposure, particularly of pregnant women and their newborn babies, they will have not been exposed to the usual endemic respiratory viruses.
"The protection that a pregnant woman would give to their unborn child has not occurred.
"So we are going to see a rise in a disease called bronchiolitis, and a rise in community acquired pneumonia in children and in the frail elderly, to the other respiratory viruses for which we don't have vaccines.
"So that's why we're predicting a rough July, August and then a rough winter period."
Dr Susan Hopkins, the strategic response director for Covid-19 at Public Health England (PHE) also warned of a possible rise in cases at the end of the year.
She told the BBC's The Andrew Marr Show: "We may have to do further lockdowns this winter, I can't predict the future, it really depends on whether the hospitals start to become overwhelmed at some point.
"But I think we will have alternative ways to manage this, through vaccination, through anti-virals, through drugs, through testing that we didn't have last winter.
"All of those things allow us different approaches rather than restrictions on livelihoods that will move us forward into the next phase of learning to live with this as an endemic that happens as part of the respiratory viruses."
Some scientists have said the UK is currently in the grips of a third wave to the arrival of the highly infectious Delta variant.
The high cases derailed plans to lift lockdown completely on June 21 with Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushing the move back to July 19.
Despite this alarming realisation, there are reasons to be confident that this time around the virus will wreak far less havoc.
At the moment the data show that hospitalisations are not increasing with the same speed as they were in the second wave.
In the North West hospital rates are a third of what they were during the second wave in September.
