Britain will have to “prepare for a hard winter”, a medical chief warned today amid fears flu and new strains of coronavirus could surge at the same time.
Dr Susan Hopkins said mutant strains of Covid-19 from abroad could pose a risk - despite hopes all UK adults will get their first dose of a vaccine as soon as June.
At the same time, she said there is a risk people will be less immune than usual to flu next winter because it has had less chance to spread in lockdown.
Dr Hopkins, Public Health England’s response director for Covid-19, stressed she was looking at a “worst-case scenario” but the nation must be more ready than it was last Autumn.
“We will need to be ready for an Autumn that could be challenging as these variants are there,” she told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
Dr Hopkins said the government was working closely with vaccine firms to develop a booster shot to any new variants, but added: “We’re also very conscious that what happened last summer and late summer and early September could happen again. We need to be prepared for that and hope it doesn’t happen”.
It comes despite the vaccine rollout storming ahead with over-56s now being offered the chance to come forward for their first dose.
Dr Hopkins said “I think that we will hopefully all have our summer holidays” and new variants are unlikely to have any impact on lockdown easing in the next three to five weeks.
But she added: “I think we have to prepare for a hard winter - not only with coronavirus but we’ve had a year of almost no respiratory viruses of any other type.
“And that means potentially the population immunity to that is less. And so we could see surges in flu, we could see surges in other respiratory viruses and pathogens.”
It comes after six cases of the P.1 Covid “variant of concern” first found in Manaus, Brazil, were detected in the UK.
Experts fear the vaccine may be less effective against the P.1 strain, along with another from South Africa also seen in the UK, than against other forms of coronavirus.
Tests are still being carried out to establish whether the variants are resistant to vaccines or spread more easily.
