Chris Whitty has warned the UK faces another 18 months of Covid misery.
England’s Chief Medical Officer suggested the number of people in hospital could be “very high indeed” over a short period of time.
And he warned it is “entirely possible” that daily admissions to UK hospitals could top the previous peak of 4,583 - set in the second wave in January.
Speaking to MPs on the Health and Social Care Select Committee, Professor Whitty said: "If I project forward, I would anticipate in a number of years, possibly 18 months, possibly slightly less... we will have polyvalent vaccines which will cover a much wider range [of variants].
"And we will probably have several antivirals... and a variety of other countermeasures that mean that the great majority, and probably almost all of the heavy lifting, when we get a new variant, unless it is extremely different, can be met by medical means."
It comes an alarming 88,376 people have tested positive for Covid in 24 hours - the highest figure of the pandemic so far and a 73.7 per cent increase in just a week.
Department of Health figures show a further 146 lives have been lost to the virus as the country is hit by the "tidal wave of Omicron" which Boris Johnson warned of at the weekend.
And that follows an already record-breaking 78,610 cases were confirmed yesterday - up from 50,867 last Thursday and 53,945 a fortnight ago.
It means more than 442,000 infections have been confirmed in the past seven days, up 31.4 per cent on the previous week.
Hospitalisations have also gone up, but the number of deaths has dropped slightly, today's bulletin reveals.
A total of 803 people have died within 28 days of contracting the virus in the past week, 51 lower than the previous week's total, with the official Covid death toll now standing at 146,937.
On this day last year, there were 25,161 cases - although the number of deaths announced on that day was far higher than the latest update, with 612 lives lost.
Prof Whitty told MPs the doubling rate of Omicron cases - currently every two days - “will slow down” as people cancel events, and the pool of people who haven’t already been infected by Omicron shrinks.
But he said he thinks the “upswing will be incredibly fast, even if people are taking more cautious actions as they are… it’ll probably therefore peak really quite fast.
“My anticipation is it may then come down come down faster than previous peaks.
“But I wouldn’t want to say that for sure, I’m just saying that is a possibility.”
He declined to back or reject modelling suggesting 20-30million Brits could be infected with Omicron over winter; a peak of 600,000 infections a day end of Jan; hospitalisations 3-7,000 a day.
He said "I’m extremely cautious of forward projections on exponential models", adding there is a "very wide range of possibilities as to where this could go".
But on hospital admissions he said: “The peak of 4,583 admitted at the absolute peak - it is possible, because this is going to be very concentrated, that even if it’s milder, because it’s concentrated over a short period of time you could end up with a higher number than that going into hospital on a single day.
“That is entirely possible - it may be less than that, but that is certainly possible.”
He added the total number of people in hospital - rather than daily admissions - might not hit the record if people are hospitalised for a shorter time on average.
