A scientific adviser to the government has warned of the possibility of a "third wave" of coronavirus if a vaccine against the disease is not developed.
Professor Mark Woolhouse, of the University of Edinburgh, said that the government needed to think of alternative ways to control the virus in the absence of a vaccine.
Appearing on the Andrew Marr Show on the BBC this morning, Professor Woolhouse said another spike in infections early next year was "entirely possible" and that imposing a fresh lockdown would not necessarily be an effective way of managing the virus.
He said: "A scenario I mentioned earlier does actually include this possibility [a third wave] and this is just another demonstration of what I was saying earlier that lockdown doesn’t solve the problem, it defers it.
"That is why we need some kind of cavalry on the horizon or alternatively if we think that vaccine is not going to be available in six months or 12 months or two years or whenever it may be that we do need alternatives.
"The alternatives that have been mentioned so far are things like the moonshot programme on mass testing and there may be others on the horizon."
Professor Woolhouse sits on the government's Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on modelling (SPI-M) and warned that the country would have to live with the virus until a vaccine is found.
He added: "I have to say that most people I have talked to who are involved in vaccine development think that we may have a vaccine in six months but it is doubtful that we will have been able to roll it out on a mass scale by that time.
"We are in a difficult situation for some months to come I am afraid."
