One of the leading medical experts in Ireland has declared we are close to the end of the Covid-19 pandemic in Ireland.
The deadly coronavirus has killed over 5,000 people in this country since the first case was registered all the way back in March of 2020.
However, according to Luke O'Neill, professor of biochemistry in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, we are now very close to the end of the pandemic.
Speaking to Pat Kenny on Newstalk on Thursday, Professor O'Neill said: "This is now a preventable disease - that's the way to put it.
"We can prevent Covid through vaccination, and we couldn't have said that six/nine months ago really.
"So now it's preventable: that means widespread vaccination will prevent Covid-19."
Though Professor O'Neill did note that vaccines wouldn't eliminate the disease completely.
He added: "It'll go away, it might come back occasionally - we've never gotten rid of any infection - smallpox is the only [one] we've eliminated.
"So we'll see spikes into the future remember, and the more you decrease the virus the less variants pop up."
But Professor O'Neill was quite positive in his overall outlook - particularly after a recent UK study of almost a million people revealed that vaccinations cut the chance of transmission in half in people who have contracted the virus after getting the jab.
He continued: "So you can imagine now the virus gradually going away in a community because of vaccination.
"It'll become like colds and flus in the end, in that we'll all have it and we'll all have antibodies and we'll be protected for years and years afterwards hopefully.
"Eventually, a combination of vaccination and natural immunity through infection will build up in the population and then that's the way we live with it in the end I guess."
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