Britain Won't Return to Normality This Year, Says Chris Whitty

Britain Won’t Return to Normality This Year, Says Chris Whitty

Whether or not ‘Freedom Day’ takes place on July 19th, we won’t truly return to normal until at least next spring, says Chris Whitty, warning that it is “going to take quite a long time to get back to normality”. The MailOnline has the story.

England’s Chief Medical Officer hinted that some curbs may have to be rolled back later this year when the NHS faces a “difficult winter”.
But, in a glimmer of hope[!], Professor Whitty claimed he anticipated that the U.K. could return to the “status quo” by next spring.
However, he admitted that he would be “surprised” if British life managed to return to pre-Covid normality before then, adding it was “going to take quite a long time to get back to normality”.
Covid hospital admissions and deaths are expected to rise in the weeks and months after July 19th, when all social distancing measures are due to be lifted in England.
Officials are also bracing for a rise in other respiratory illnesses that have been suppressed by lockdown measures during the pandemic, such as flu.
But it’s hoped enough people will have been vaccinated or protected due to prior infection by next spring that the coronavirus will no longer trigger a deadly surge.
Speaking to the Local Government Association’s annual conference, Professor Whitty said: “There will almost certainly be a Covid surge [in winter] and that will be on top of a return to a more normal respiratory surge.
“It’s going to take quite a long time, I think, to get back to normality and I certainly would be surprised if we got back to what most of us would see as a kind of status quo – before the pandemic – by the next spring.
“Because I think we’ve got this current wave, hopefully there will be a period of quieter Covid after that, and then it will still be quite a difficult winter, especially for the NHS – then by next spring I’m hoping slightly more into a more predictable pattern.”

Worth reading in full.