“Whisper it,” said Kat Lay and Tom Whipple in The Times, “but there are – perhaps – signs that it could be safe to press ahead with planning for Christmas.” Surveys suggest that coronavirus in the UK may be in retreat.
In England, where about one person in 50 have Covid, case numbers are falling, largely as a result of a drop of infections among secondary-school children. Scientists have cautioned that this downward trend may just be a temporary effect of half-term.
They’ve also warned that cases are still rising among the over-50s as a result of waning immunity. But with booster jabs dealing with that latter problem, and the prospect of new antiviral treatments on the way, the “mood music is beginning to sound optimistic”.
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The antiviral pills could be “game changers”, said Matthew Lesh in The Daily Telegraph. Merck’s drug, molnupiravir, which was licensed last week for use in the UK, reduced hospitalisation by 50% among vulnerable people in trials. Pfizer, meanwhile, announced last week that its new antiviral pill, Paxlovid, which is set to be licensed in the UK early next year, reduces hospitalisation by 89%. With these drugs, and others like them, Covid could become a “treatable, uninteresting, even run-of-the-mill, virus”. The only problem is that the UK has so far secured a very limited supply of these pills.
We can’t afford to drop our guard against Covid yet, said The Guardian. As England’s deputy chief medical officer, Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, warned last week, the pandemic is far from over. Indeed, it’s now raging through Europe again.
The recent decision by Jeremy Farrar to walk out of Sage, the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, showed that some experts feel strongly that the Government is no longer “following the science”, said Mary Dejevsky in The Independent. They may be right; but many of their previous warnings have proved too alarmist, and their opinions should be just one of many that are taken into account.
Ultimately, it must be left to politicians to decide whether or not to reimpose restrictions. “The pandemic may not be quite on its last legs, but it is a positive development that UK ministers and scientists are returning to their separate tracks.”
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