London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Oct 14, 2025

Covid: We could live with virus 'like we do flu' by end of year, says Hancock

Covid: We could live with virus 'like we do flu' by end of year, says Hancock

Vaccines and treatments could mean that - by the end of the year - Covid-19 is an illness we can live with "like we do flu", Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said.

He told the Daily Telegraph he hoped new drugs coming by the end of 2021 could make Covid a "treatable disease".

The drugs - and vaccines - represent "our way out to freedom", he said.

Mr Hancock said he hoped all UK adults could be offered the vaccine "a bit before" September.

He said new treatments were needed for a "small number" who may not be protected by vaccines - a first dose of which has already been given to 14 million people.

Antibody treatments are being trialled as an alternative to vaccines for people with impaired immune systems.

Mr Hancock said new treatments would play an important role in "turning Covid from a pandemic that affects all of our lives into another illness that we have to live with, like we do flu. That's where we need to get Covid to over the months to come".

Living with Covid safely would also depend on the vaccines:

*  reducing the numbers admitted to hospital

*  reducing deaths

*  cutting transmission of the virus

Mr Hancock's comments suggest he is ruling out a "zero Covid" strategy, aimed at eliminating the virus entirely from the UK.

Conservative MP David Davis told BBC Radio 4 Today: "There will come a point where there will be a death rate from Covid but it's at a normal level and then we have to cope with it.

"Obviously we try to prevent it, but we accept it, I think, we have to."


This is simply about being realistic. Covid isn't something that can be eradicated like smallpox.

Temporary suppression, which is essentially what countries like New Zealand have done, is about protecting people in the short-term. Unless they keep their borders shut forever, it cannot work long-term.

Vaccines mean immunity builds up and at the very least should stop most people falling seriously ill.

There will be an ongoing challenge of keeping up with a virus that will mutate - although this is likely to be less difficult than it seems as coronaviruses tend to be much more stable than flu, for which different strains circulate every year.

There will always be people who are susceptible, either the vaccine doesn't work or they have refused to have it. That is why the continued advances in treatments are essential.

But we should never again see the levels of deaths we have.

Thousands will still die in winters to come. But each year this should lessen until it gets near to the levels of mortality we see with flu - something which society readily accepts.

However, scientists have urged caution.

Professor Steven Riley, a member of the Spi-M modelling group, said the rollout of vaccination did not mean coronavirus controls could be dropped, adding that Britain could face a wave as big as the current one if lockdown restrictions were all lifted.

"No vaccine is perfect. We are certainly going to be in the situation where we can allow more infection in the community but there is a limit," he told the BBC.

"In the short term, if we were to allow a very large wave of infection, that wave will find all the people who couldn't have the vaccine for very good reason (and) those people who had the vaccine but unfortunately it didn't give them the protection they need."



Dr Sarah Pitt, a virologist at the University of Brighton, disagreed with Mr Hancock's suggestion that we could live with coronavirus like we do the flu.

She told the BBC: "It's not a type of flu. It's not the same sort of virus. It doesn't cause the same sort of disease, it's very, very nasty."

"The mutations, the variations, that we're seeing are becoming more infectious, not less infectious and a bit more dangerous, not less dangerous."

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, told the BBC politicians would have to decide what level of deaths was acceptable if "zero Covid" was not possible - adding that, in some years, 30,000 people died from flu.

He said the UK was likely to see another spike in Covid-19 cases next winter and suggested it would take two, three or four years to build up sufficient levels of immunity in the population.

"Even if we do have high levels of population immunity, our borders are not going to be secure - and we can't keep locking people up in hotels for the next five years," Dr Horton said.

Meanwhile, the efficacy of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in children will be tested in a clinical trial, starting this month.

Some 300 volunteers between the ages of six and 17 will be involved in the study to assess whether the jab produces a strong immune response in children.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
EU Deploys New Biometric Entry/Exit System: What Non-EU Travelers Must Know
Australian Prime Minister’s Private Number Exposed Through AI Contact Scraper
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
×