A leading doctor believes coronavirus will soon resemble a common cold and thinks Omicron could be the beginning of the end of the pandemic.
The University of Warwick's Dr Mike Tildesley believes the world will soon learn to function again as normal.
The medic, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling group which feeds into SAGE, previously questioned the need for curbs.
He raised hopes that cases are starting to slow in Covid hot-spot London despite the UK reporting nearly 180,000 new cases on Friday.
Dr Tildesley pointed to the capital's flatlining cases and hospital admissions as an encouraging sign that things are starting to turn around.
He told Times Radio: "The thing that might happen in the future is you may see the emergence of a new variant that is less severe, and ultimately, in the long term, what happens is Covid becomes endemic and you have a less severe version.
"It's very similar to the common cold that we've lived with for many years.
"We're not quite there yet but possibly Omicron is the first ray of light there that suggests that may happen in the longer term - it is, of course, much more transmissible than Delta was, which is concerning, but much less severe.
"Hopefully, as we move more towards the spring and we see the back of Omicron, we can get more inter-relationship of living with Covid as an endemic disease and protecting the vulnerable."
But he did state that the North East and North West of England are seeing the most "concerning" rates of the Omicron variant.
However, he added: "It doesn't sound all doom and gloom, what we are seeing from hospital admissions is that stays in hospital do appear to be on average shorter, which is good news, symptoms appear to be a little bit milder, so this what we are seeing consistently with the Omicron variant."
His comments come after the Prime Minister told a Downing Street press conference this week that England had a chance to "ride out this Omicron wave without shutting down our country".
On Friday, the UK reported 178,250 daily coronavirus cases and another 229 deaths.
The government say there are 18,454 people in hospital with coronavirus as of the last count. Of those, 868 of whom are in ventilation beds.
The R rate has increased and is now estimated to be between 1.2 and 1.5, according to the latest figures.
Just over 35 million people have now had a third vaccine, stats show.
However, health secretary Sajid Javid says the NHS is facing a "rocky few weeks ahead" as it contends with a wave of Omicron cases.
He said: "The best thing people can do is get their booster jab.
"We know now that Omicron is less severe… and we certainly know that once you get boosted that your chance of hospitalisation, our latest analysis shows, is almost 90% less than it was with Delta."
