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The “pandemic is over” if new Covid-19 variants are not sending more people to hospital, a vaccines expert says – but he urged the government to wait “a few more weeks” to know for certain.
Professor Andrew Pollard, from the University of Oxford, said the weekend data – suggesting strong protection against the Indian variant after two jabs – was the “wrong exam question”.
Ministers have seized on the Public Health England figures to say the prospects for lifting all remaining Covid restrictions on 21 June are “looking good”.
But Prof Pollard said what mattered is whether infections have been “uncoupled” from hospitalisations and deaths, not the transmitting of mild symptoms, expressing hope that the data will show that.
“The thing that makes this a pandemic is people going into hospital,” the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group said.
“If the current generation of vaccines are able to stop people going into hospital – while there is still mild infections, people are getting the common cold with the virus – then the pandemic is over.
“Because we can live with the virus – in fact we are going to have to live with the virus one way or another.
“But it doesn’t matter if most people are kept out of hospital, because then the NHS can continue to function and life will be back to normal.”
It would be “a few more weeks” for the data to emerge, Prof Pollard told BBC Radio 4, adding: “We just need a little more time to have certainty around this.”
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