Kent variant will ‘sweep the world’ as Covid battle ‘will last at least ten years’

The virus may change to no longer be fatal or cause serious illness

The battle against Covid-19 will last at least ten years, a leading scientist warned today.

Professor Sharon Peacock, director of the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium, also told how the Kent strain of the virus is likely to sweep around the world.

The professor of public health and microbiology at Cambridge University’s Department of Medicine made clear the threat from the virus would be hugely diminished as vaccines are rolled out, medicines improve and people understand how social distancing can combat it.

She also made clear that the virus may change to no longer be fatal or cause serious illness.

“Once we get on top of [the virus] or it mutates itself out of being virulent - causing disease - then we can stop worrying about it. But I think, looking in the future, we’re going to be doing this for years,” she told the BBC.

“We’re still going to be doing this ten years down the line, in my view.”

She added that the Kent variant, which was detected across Britain and in more than 50 countries, has “swept the country” and “it’s going to sweep the world, in all probability”.

The new variant initially led to London and parts of southern and eastern England being rushed into Tier 4 restrictions prior to Christmas, before stricter measures were introduced throughout the UK.

Analysis of the variant, known as B117, suggests it is up to 70 per cent more transmissible than the previous strain that was dominant in the UK.

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