Oxford professor says Covid could be more like common cold by next spring

Professor Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, said the country 'is over the worst' and things 'should be fine' once winter has passed, adding that there was continued exposure to the virus even in people who are vaccinated.

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It comes after Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert told a Royal Society of Medicine webinar that viruses tend to become weaker as they spread around.

She said: “We normally see that viruses become less virulent as they circulate more easily and there is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of Sars-CoV-2.

Seasonal coronaviruses cause colds, and Dame Sarah said: “Eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those.”

Asked about the comments on Times Radio, Sir John said: “If you look at the trajectory we’re on, we’re a lot better off than we were six months ago. So the pressure on the NHS is largely abated.

"If you look at the deaths from Covid, they tend to be very elderly people, and it’s not entirely clear it was Covid that caused all those deaths. So I think we’re over the worst of it now.

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Professor John Bell, Regius.

“And I think what will happen is, there will be quite a lot of background exposure to Delta (variant), we can see the case numbers are quite high, that particularly in people who’ve had two vaccines if they get a bit of breakthrough symptomatology, or not even symptomatology – if they just are asymptomatically infected, that will add to our immunity substantially, so I think we’re headed for the position Sarah describes probably by next spring would be my view.

“We have to get over the winter to get there but I think it should be fine.”

The professor said people should not panic and that the number of severe infections and deaths from Covid 'remains very low'.

He said Covid vaccines worked to prevent serious illness and death but 'don’t really effectively reduce the amount of transmission'.

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Sir John added: “If everybody’s expecting the vaccines and the boosters to stop that, they won’t. And it’s slightly a false promise.”

He said he agreed with England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, that the vast majority of children would get Covid without a vaccine, adding 'this is now an endemic virus, it’ll circulate pretty widely'.

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