It is too early to start “living with Covid”, scientists have warned, after the former vaccines minister suggested the UK could lead the world into moving from a pandemic to endemic phase with the virus.
Insisting that there are “absolutely not” plans to imminently axe free lateral flow tests, as was earlier reported, Nadhim Zahawi made clear that ministers are preparing to eventually treat the virus as part of the normal range of ongoing health problems, rather than a national emergency.
It came as Welsh first minister Mark Drakeford accused Boris Johnson’s government of ignoring “what the science would have told them they should do” by refusing to introduce Covid restrictions.
But, predicting that the UK is “certainly not going to see a big rise in intensive care admissions and deaths”, leading Cambridge statistician Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter told Times Radio that cases “may have stabilised over the whole country” and that, after taking a “gamble”, Mr Johnson “may have got away with it, but we're going to have to see the next few weeks”.
