A group of prominent UK scientists, led by Sir Andrew Pollard head of the Oxford vaccine team, addressed an all party parliamentary group today.
Their report was sobering, and not what people want to hear.
They made these statements.
Herd immunity is no longer possible from Covid-19, because the Delta strain is so infectious.
Everyone is going to get exposed to this variant.
They have recommended that all contact tracing and mitigation measures, other than vaccinations cease. That only testing of sick people be tested, to make a diagnosis.
(Interestingly Germany has ceased routine testing.)
Professor Paul Hunter an infectious disease expert at the University of East Anglia stated that current data showed that the current vaccines only confer 50% protection from symptomatic infection, but good protection from serious disease. Time will tell how long this protection lasts.
This is not the news that people want to hear at all. However pending further scientific progress this infection is now endemic. The biggest threat is a mutation that evades the vaccine. In the opinion of this panel that is more likely than not.
In event of the latter scenario, this will require better treatment of symptomatic infections. This is more likely than not to require the construction of more medical facilities and the training of larger numbers of medical personnel. If not, then there will not be the capacity to treat other medical conditions. This will result in health care requiring and even larger percentage of GDP, further worsening the economic outlook.
