England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty has warned he is expecting a “further winter surge” of Covid, but suggested the scale was still “uncertain”.
In a keynote speech, professor Whitty stressed the autumn and winter months favour respiratory diseases, adding: “I do think that there will be further problems over the winter”.
But he said it would be “surprising” if it was on the scale of the winter just gone, which resulted in England’s third national lockdown, telling the NHS Confederation conference on Thursday it “was the worst any of us could remember”.
On the current situation, he said it was “likely to be a third surge and possibly a significant wave” — just days after Boris Johnson delayed the easing of all Covid restrictions amid rising infections linked to the Delta variant first detected in India.
Praised the efforts of the NHS during the pandemic, however, professor Whitty said the vaccination rollout was increasing protection for individuals, particularly after a second jab, by substantially reducing transmission of the virus and hospitalisations.
“The immediate forward view is all over the newspapers,” he said. “I believe there is a range of possible scenarios, but we are definitely in a situation where there is a further surge and I think the height of that surge is still uncertain,” he said. “We’ll have to see how this goes over the next several weeks.
“But that will definitely translate into further hospitalisations and unfortunately will definitely translate to further deaths.”
In the medium term, he added: “My expectation is that we will get a further winter surge — late autumn-winter surge.
“And that’s because we know that winter/autumn favour respiratory viruses and therefore it would be very surprising if this particularly highly transmissible virus was not also favoured. So we’ll get the current wave — an exit wave — then I do think most people think that there will be further problems over the winter.
“How big they will be I think is uncertain — that partly depends on do we get any variants that can evade vaccines better and depends on how the current wave passes through the UK.”
He later said: “In terms of the next winter the other thing we need to bear in mind is that we had a minimal flu winter last winter… we will get all of those back this coming winter unless the Covid situation is so bad that everyone is starting to get back to essentially minimising their social contacts again.
“Either we will have a very significant Covid surge, people minimise their contacts, and we will have less respiratory viruses, or people we will back to the more normal life, there will be some Covid but on top of that we will go back to having a flu surge, an RSV surge in children and so on.
“So I think we need to be aware of and brace the fact the coming winter may well be quite a difficult one, not probably on the scale of the last one, it would be very surprising if it’s on the scale of the last winter, which was really was the worst I think any of us could remember.
“But still quite a significant one and we as the NHS have to brace ourselves for that.”
Over the next two to three years, professor Whitty suggested new variant may mean will have to receive booster vaccinations, saying: “We have to just be aware that Covid has not thrown its last surprise at us and there will be several more over the next period”.
