Scientists are warning that it is too early for the country to start “living with Covid”, after cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi suggested that the UK could lead the world in moving from a pandemic to endemic phase of the disease.
The former vaccines minister said he would like to see isolation after a positive test reduced from seven to five days to help tackle staffing shortages in the NHS, schools and other critical services.
But he denied that the government is imminently planning to end the provision of free Covid testing except for people with symptoms and those in high-risk settings such as care homes.
There was widespread alarm at a Sunday Times report that free tests could be scaled back within weeks in order to rein in a bill which has already topped £6bn.
And while Mr Zahawi said that this was “absolutely not where we are at”, he made clear that the government is preparing for a new stage in its Covid response, where the virus will be treated as part of the normal range of ongoing health problems rather than a national emergency.
“I hope we will be one of the first major economies to demonstrate to the world how you transition from pandemic to endemic and then deal with this for however long it remains – whether that’s five, six, seven or 10 years,” he told Sky News’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday.
Mr Zahawi said the authorities must be “careful” about changing rules about staying at home after a positive test and said he would respect the outcome of the UK Health Security Agency’s current review on whether to move to five-day isolation.
But he added: “Of course it would help for that to happen as soon as possible.
“It would certainly help mitigate some of the pressures on schools and our critical workforce and others.”
Meanwhile, the former head of the government’s vaccine taskforce, Dr Clive Dix, said the UK should stop mass inoculation campaigns after the current booster drive and concentrate on a “more targeted approach for the vulnerable”.
“It’s pointless to keep giving more and more vaccine to people who are not going to get very ill,” said Dr Dix. “We should just let them get ill and let them deal with that.
“Stop measuring case numbers and getting fixated by stopping those numbers. We’re not going to stop those numbers.”
Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon warned that ditching free lateral flow tests would be an “utterly wrong-headed” move, while Labour said it would be “the wrong decision at the wrong time”.
And the CBI said that moving away from free testing now would make “no economic sense” because of its importance in keeping the country open for business.
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said: “Now is not the time to throw in the towel in the fight against Covid. The government must guarantee free lateral flow tests for as long as they are asking people to self-isolate.”
Meanwhile, scientists voiced concern that the government appeared to be signalling that it was ready to move the UK towards “living with Covid”.
University College London professor Christina Pagel said: “A virus isn’t endemic just because a government minister says it is and just because people want it to be.
“Learning to live with Covid would actually involve some learning. For instance, creating safer environments through mass investment in clean air. Pretending Covid is not a problem is not the same thing.”
Prof Pagel said that the “minimal public health response” to the Omicron variant adopted by the government in England “seems set to doom us to massive surges once or twice a year”.
“If that continues we’ll keep picking off the vulnerable, keep stressing a weakening NHS, [and] create more chronic illness and mass disruption through people off sick every time, with a lower quality of life for all of us,” she added.
GP Dr Helen Salisbury, a member of the Independent Sage group of scientists and medics, said: “People are talking about Covid ‘becoming endemic’ as if this is a good thing.
“TB and smallpox were once endemic in the UK – it doesn’t mean mild, it just means widespread.
“Other countries aren’t throwing in the towel – why has our government given up trying to protect us?”
And Oxford University professor of primary care Trisha Greenhalgh said: “Stop testing, play it down, normalise the deaths, deny the long-term consequences, learn to live with it, mock the scientists… I’m trying to imagine what would’ve happened if we’d taken the same approach to a previous fast-spreading infectious disease, such as smallpox, polio, TB or HIV.”
Latest figures from the UK Health Security Agency showed that since last Monday, more than 1.2 million people have tested positive for the virus – a 6.6 per cent increase on the previous week.
On Thursday, there were 18,454 people in hospital with coronavirus, up from 14,126 a week before. Just under five per cent of patients required mechanical ventilation to help them breathe.
A further 97 deaths and 141,472 new infections were reported on Sunday.
