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Coronavirus: UK may have to learn to live with ‘endemic’ disease, scientist warns MPs

Coronavirus testing at Heathrow Airport (LHR AIRPORTS LIMITED/AFP via Get)
Coronavirus testing at Heathrow Airport (LHR AIRPORTS LIMITED/AFP via Get)

Britain may have to learn to live with coronavirus, as the disease becomes a permanent presence in human populations, a scientific expert has told MPs.

Prof David Heymann said that large-scale test-and-trace operations and “surgical” local lockdowns may have to be deployed over the long term, if vaccines and treatments do not become available.

He told an inquiry by the House of Commons health and science committees that previous coronaviruses have not been eradicated but have become “endemic” in human populations.

He pointed to Asian countries like China and Taiwan as examples of the approach which may have to be taken to Covid-19 over the long term.

And he said that Germany has shown, through its use of mass testing and a fleet of “Covid taxis” to transport infected people, that Asian methods can be applied effectively to European countries.

Prof Heymann, the professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and head of the Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security, told the inquiry: “What's happening in Asia is that they're learning to live with the pandemic.

“That's very important because, at present, it appears that this infection may become endemic in human populations, like for previous coronaviruses.”

Prof Heymann told the committees that a technical advisory which he chairs has already produced a paper looking at “living with the pandemic using the tools we have at present, and not waiting for a vaccine that might not come or that might not be what we're anticipating, or a therapeutic”.

He explained: “That's what the Asian countries have done and they've been able to keep transmission at low levels … and at the same time they've had decreased mortality, compared to other countries.

“They don't just lock down bluntly. What they do is a surgical lockdown. If they have good epidemiological tracing of where transmission is occurring, they shut those areas down, plus they mitigate by making sure that mass gatherings in places where people congregate are not occurring.”

Asked whether he would advise other countries, such as the UK, to follow the Asian approach, Prof Heymann said: “The reason that they can do this in Asia is because they started early with contact tracing and made sure that they stopped the outbreaks that occurred, and therefore they decreased transmission into the communities.

“Germany has continued with contact tracing from the very first imported cases from China, and they've continued to do that with massive numbers of contact tracers and ‘Covid taxis’ that take these people around.

“What they've shown is that it can be done in European countries as well.

"And I think that's a very important lesson we can all learn, that by finding discrete outbreaks and decreasing transmission from those outbreaks, you can in fact control the outbreaks in a very good way, using surgical shutdowns when you need to - for example in nightspots in areas where the outbreak is shown.”

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