The UK should be “more or less free” of the coronavirus crisis by the end of the year, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has predicted.
Speaking to ITV’s Peston Professor John Edmunds said: “I think we will be more or less free of this by the end of this year… say Christmas.”
His comments came as he was discussing the relaxation of the current lockdown restrictions too quickly, and also urged Britons to be “very cautious” about arranging their summer holidays.
“I think we do have to keep our borders pretty tight at the moment – nobody likes this,” he said.
“But we’ve identified these significant new variants that are out there and we need to be able to arm ourselves against them and we don’t have new vaccines that could potentially arm ourselves against these new variants yet.
“I know that companies are working very hard on developing new vaccines in order to protect against these potential new variants that might affect us so I do think we need to be very cautious at the moment about travel abroad.”
Prof Edmunds also warned that the new Bristol variant “may be able to reinfect people who have been previously infected or who have been previously vaccinated”.
