Covid-19 is unlikely ever to be eradicated and the outlook for the pandemic remains “pretty bleak” in the medium term, leading Government scientists have said.
England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said the world will continue to see a “significant” number of deaths unless more effort is made to vaccinate the vulnerable globally.
And he warned that while coronavirus may become a “much milder, chronic disease” in the long term, new variants will continue to cause problems.
Chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty (Hollie Adams/PA)
Speaking at a Royal Society online event about Covid-19 on Thursday, Prof Whitty said: “In the medium term, the outlook still looks pretty bleak around the world.
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The FINANCIAL Data from the COVID-19 Infection Survey, a partnership between the University of Oxford, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), is the first to show the impact of vaccination on antibody responses and new infections in a large group of adults from the general population aged 16 years and older, according to University of Oxford.
Two studies, released today as pre-prints, focused on the protection from infection provided by COVID-19 vaccines. Researchers analysed 1,610,562 test results from nose and throat swabs taken from 373,402 study participants between 1 December 2020 and 3 April 2021. 21 days after a single dose of either Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines (with no second dose), the rates of all new COVID-19 infections had dropped by 65%, symptomatic infections by 72% and infections without reported symptoms by 57%.
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The vaccines were more effective against symptomatic than asymptomatic infections, reducing rates by 72 per cent and 57 per cent respectively, compared with those seen in the unvaccinated population
One shot of the Oxford/AstraZeneca or Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine reduces coronavirus infections by nearly two-thirds and protects older and more vulnerable people as much as younger, healthy individuals, a study has found.
The results from Oxford University and the Office for National Statistics are a welcome boost to the vaccination programme and the first to show the impact on new infections and immune responses in a large group of adults in the general population.