Professor Chris Whitty warns that it is impractical to believe that border control can prevent new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from invading the United Kingdom.
Professor Chris Whitti / RSM
The current policy was to limit their spread, said England’s Chief Health Officer. He also reiterated his prediction that COVID-19 will become a permanent feature of life in the near future and must be managed as a recurrent disease. Professor Whitti, who attended a webinar hosted by the Royal Society of Medicine, predicted that as the country emerged from the blockade, the number of cases of COVID-19 could increase again.
New variant
“When you actually start to open things, R is a little above 1. This is likely to happen. It’s a bit below the current roadmap. Opportunities to spread as variants come in. There is. ” “And if it starts to spread-if it has a competitive advantage-it will beat others and at some point it will be more important.”
However, “we must admit that the idea of being able to stop all variants flowing into the UK is not a viable starting point.”
Whether you’re dealing with an existing strain of SARS-CoV 2 or a new variant, “What we’re trying to do at this point slows this down. How to do it with border policy. You don’t have to worry about any country. You have less than you have, but you are worried about more countries than you have, “he said.
Future vaccine
Answering various questions about pandemics, the UK’s most senior doctors can “find a way to overcome this in the long run” with current vaccines and the ability to update them to tackle new variants. I said I would.
He states: “Two years ahead, I think we will have a very broad portfolio of vaccines.” Until then, it was a “risk era.”
“So we are in a very difficult situation at the moment and we are working carefully.”
Asked by Sir Simon Wesley, a professor of psychosomatic medicine at King’s College London, the organizer of the webinar, about the future of COVID-19, Professor Whitty said: Will be around. “
He states: “As you know, it’s clear that we have to manage it at some point, not we control it. influenza.. “
Over time, “actually, we need to keep it at a low level and minimize death as much as possible, but we need to balance doing as much hard work as possible in a way that the population can tolerate. By: Vaccines, perhaps medicines, such, which may actually mean that we can minimize mortality without maximizing the economic and especially social impact on our fellow citizens. I think not.”
Correspondence to politicians
Professor Whitty, who attended many Downing Street briefings with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, did not directly address reports that the government wanted to blockade earlier when the COVID incident surged before Christmas. Insisted not hesitate to make him. A view known when he thinks a politician is wandering into the tech field beyond policy issues.
“Most of the decisions I’m dealing with are somewhere in between these two, and where I think they’re in that spectrum determines whether I’m really really into the discussion,” he said. ..
“If you think it’s primarily a technical decision and political leaders are willing to accept it, I would say,” I don’t think it’s your call. “
“Similarly, if it’s primarily a political decision, it shouldn’t be that I’m trying to make a political decision for a political leader,” he added.
