Vaccine 'unlikely to eradicate Covid', Sir Patrick Vallance tells MPs

Government’s chief scientific adviser believes disease likely to become endemic in Britain and will be more like annual flu

A vaccine is unlikely to eradicate coronavirus, with the disease instead likely to become endemic in Britain, Sir Patrick Vallance has warned. 

The Government's chief scientific adviser said the "notion of eliminating Covid is not right", adding that people would have to learn to live with the virus.

Speaking at the joint committee on national security strategy, Sir Patrick said that even if a vaccine was available by the spring it would not wipe out the virus entirely.

"I mean, it is worth reflecting that there's only one human disease that's been truly eradicated, and that's from the highly effective vaccine to smallpox, so it's a very difficult thing to do," he told MPs and peers.

"We can't be certain, but I think it's unlikely we will end up with a truly sterilising vaccine, something that completely stops infection, and it's likely this disease will circulate and be endemic. 

"Clearly as management becomes better and you get vaccination, that would decrease the chance of infection and severity of disease, and this starts to look more like annual flu than anything else and that may be the direction we end up going.

"Even with a vaccine, this is something we’re going to need to manage."

Sir Patrick added that while a number of vaccine candidates cause an immune response, only phase three trials will indicate whether they stop people from being infected.

He said: "We will know that over the next few months. And at that point we'll also have some clearer idea on the safety profile of these vaccines, and from there can start looking at what a sensible vaccination strategy could be across the population."

Sir Patrick also told the committee that more testing was still needed and experts had been left "blind" by the lack of surveillance early on in the pandemic.

He said it was important to find asymptomatic people who had the virus and who may be inadvertently infecting others, adding: "A high proportion are asymptomatic. It is a little unclear still exactly what that proportion is – it may be something around 60 per cent or so overall.

"But would I like to be able to test far more. Do I think the UK will be in a better position if we tested far more? Yes, because we know that the only way you pick up a lot of people is through testing, and the testing then needs to be linked to action of isolation.

"And the more you can get out there and test across age groups, and particularly in areas like care homes and hospital settings, the better.

"We were flying blind for quite a long time because we didn't have data and therefore you can't make decisions with data."

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