UK ‘No Longer in Pandemic’ Says Virus Expert

The UK is no longer in a pandemic after the vaccine rollout has cut infections by 90 per cent, according to an expert.

THE expert said the UK is no longer in a pandemic.

According to the Sun newspaper, Sarah Walker, a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at Oxford, said Britain had “moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation.”

She added: “Without vaccines, I don’t think getting close to zero is really feasible in the situation now in the UK where we’re effectively endemic, we’ve moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation.”

Professor Walker said falling infections were due to lockdown and vaccines. She said: “Long-term lockdown isn’t a viable solution so vaccines are clearly going to be the only way that we are going to have a chance to control this,” she said.

Data from a study of the impact of the vaccine shows it reduces infection and helps cut transmission.

It found that one dose of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines leads to a two-thirds drop in cases and is 74 per cent effective against symptomatic infection.

The study also found that after two doses of Pfizer there was a 70 per cent reduction in all cases and a 90 per cent drop in symptomatic cases.

So far 33.1 million people living in the UK have had a first dose of the vaccine, with more than 10.7 million having had a second.

It was also revealed that the hospitalisation risk in elderly people was reduced by as much as 98 per cent after a vaccine.