Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Oct 06, 2025

Why it's time to think differently about Covid

Why it's time to think differently about Covid

For more than a year, personal freedoms have been curtailed to keep Covid at bay.

That looks likely to change, with ministers proposing to lift many of the remaining restrictions in England on 19 July. The details, set out on Monday, have sparked intense debate.

Prof Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London, whose modelling led to the first lockdown, has said it is a gamble, but one worth taking.

What is unarguable is that the nature of the pandemic in the UK has changed - and with it so should many of our assumptions.

Covid no longer the deadly virus it was


The rollout of the vaccination programme has altered everything, reducing both the individual risk and the wider one to the health system.

Back in January, about one in 10 infections could be expected to translate into a hospital admission 10 days later. Now that figure appears to be somewhere between one in 40 and one in 50.



What is more, those ending up in hospital seem to be less sick, and need less intensive treatment.

The risk of death, as a result, has reduced even further. In January about one in 60 cases resulted in someone dying. Today it's fewer than one in 1,000.

Third wave will still be big


But this does not mean England - and the rest of the UK for that matter - is not heading for a significant third wave.

As the charts above show, infection rates are rising. If they rise enough, that has the potential to cause a significant number of hospitalisations, possibly 1,000 a day before summer is out.

Many may wonder how this can happen given how effective the vaccines are.

Individually, those who have had two doses are at a very tiny risk of getting seriously ill, but with infection rates high it means many people are taking that tiny risk at the same time. Add to that those who are unvaccinated or for whom the vaccines do not work as well and you can get a lot of admissions to hospital.


But serious illness happens all the time. In the depths of winter there can be 1,000 admissions a day for respiratory infections.

Flu alone killed more than 20,000 people in England in the winter of 2017-18. There was no talk of the need to introduce restrictions or curtail freedoms then.

"That is the context we need to start seeing Covid in," says Prof Robert Dingwall, a sociologist at Nottingham Trent University.

The difficult trade-offs


But why even take the risk? Why not - as scientists on Independent Sage have suggested -wait until the adult vaccination rollout is complete in September?

There was always going to be an "exit wave" once restrictions were lifted. And government scientists are hopeful the wall of immunity built up by natural infection and the vaccine rollout so far will soon kick in and flatten the wave.

The fact remains interventions are not harm-free, so in the end it comes down to difficult judgements about trade-offs.

As the virus presents less of a risk, that in turn shifts the balance on what can be considered proportionate.


Perhaps the clearest example of this is what is happening with schools where there are currently more than 500,000 children at home self-isolating in England because they were deemed to have close contact with an infected person at school.

That's 20 children out of school for every positive case.

This approach started in September, before vaccines had even completed their clinical trials. The idea was to contain spread of the virus to protect vulnerable adults - children are at incredibly low risk from Covid.

Now that all over-50s have had the chance of a second jab - these are the age groups where 99% of Covid deaths have occurred - the benefits of quarantining children like this is hugely reduced, while the costs in terms of disruption to education are clear to see.

Ministers say they will change this approach in time for September, but should this have been avoided given how much school has been disrupted already?

'Covid will never go away'


There are other arguments for why it should be now.

"Covid will never go away," says Prof Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia. "It's inevitable that we're going to catch it repeatedly for the rest of our lives, whether we have had the vaccine or not.


"The issues becomes not whether it is safe to lift all restrictions, but when would it be safest to do so."

Waiting any longer could make the situation worse, he believes, extending the exit wave into the autumn when schools are back and the flu season is getting under way.

It was a view echoed by England's chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty, who said it had his personal backing when the government unveiled its plans on Monday.

The eyes of the world will be on us


But the idea of letting a virus spread when we have spent so long trying to do the opposite requires a psychological shift.

Dr Muge Cevik, an infectious disease expert at University of St Andrews, says this will take time.

"We need to accept Covid is here. We won't be able to completely stop the spread. We are now at the stage of managing the virus."

She would like to see more emphasis now on recovery, tackling the backlog in hospital care for non-Covid treatments, dealing with the economic fallout and loss of jobs and the emotional and mental health toll the pandemic has had.

But none of this is without risks. What if infection rates keep rising and that wall of immunity is slow to kick in?

Understandable concerns have also been raised about those who are at risk because they have conditions such as blood cancer which mean the vaccines do not work as well or who have a higher chance of exposure because of their jobs, such as shop or factory workers.

There is also Long Covid to contend with - although the risks of this are far from fully understood.

We are, perhaps, the first country to find ourselves in this situation, where we are attempting to return to normal in the face of a rapidly rising rate of infection and a more infectious variant, Delta.

Others will soon face similar dilemmas. It's why the world will be watching what happens on these shores.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
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
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
×