Why is the UK in pole position to emerge from Covid-19 first?

The UK is the closest of any northern hemisphere country to exiting the Covid-19 pandemic, a leading expert has claimed.

David Heymann, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and former World Health Organization (WHO) official, told a briefing that the UK is “seeing the virus become endemic” and has a “population immunity”, The Telegraph reported.

His comments came as Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi told Sky News that the UK should “be one of the first major economies to demonstrate to the world how you transition from pandemic to endemic”, adding that the country is well placed to “deal with this however long it remains with us, whether that’s five, six, seven, ten years”.

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‘Keeping the virus at bay’

During an online briefing hosted by the Chatham House thinktank, Heymann said that the UK is “the closest to any country of being out of the pandemic – if it isn’t already out of the pandemic – and having the disease as endemic as the other four coronaviruses”.

He continued that “population immunity” is high, a term that describes “immunity against serious illness and death after infection if one is vaccinated, or after re-infection if one has had illness before”.

Population immunity seems to be “keeping the virus and its variants at bay, not causing serious illness or death in countries where population immunity is high”, he added.

Citing the most recent Office for National Statistics report on population immunity, he said “about 95% of the population in England and a little less than in other parts of the UK have antibody to infection either from vaccination or from natural infection”.

“That, as I said, is keeping the virus at bay. And it’s now functioning more like an endemic coronavirus than one that is a pandemic.”

Asked whether the pandemic was nearing its conclusion globally, Heymann warned that this would not be the case “until all countries have completed what they need to do to make this virus more tame and to become endemic”.

His prediction that the virus is becoming endemic means the virus should “soon settle down to normal patterns of spread seen with other infections”, The Times said, adding that “hospital admissions have stopped rising across most of England”.

“The northeast and Yorkshire is the only part of England where admissions are still clearly rising”, with “London seeing falls and the rest of the country broadly level or starting to decline”.

The data has “added confidence” to early suggestions that the Omicron variant is milder than previous Covid-19 strains, the paper added.

‘Optimistic signals’

Heymann’s prediction follows a successful booster campaign that has now reached almost 36m people across the UK.

Government sources told The Times there are “clear points that are cause for optimism”, with one adding: “We need to see a more sustained trend, but it certainly doesn’t look like it’s getting worse.”

A government figure told the paper’s Whitehall editor Chris Smyth that Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has begun “giving off optimistic signals” behind closed doors.

They added that “​​it all feels as though it’s going in the right direction”, while cautioning that “we just need a few more days of patience” to decipher whether schools returning after the Christmas break has caused a spike in infections.

Ministers are also “increasingly optimistic that many of the restrictions to prevent the spread of coronavirus will end in England on 26 January”, according to the Financial Times, with data suggesting the NHS “is unlikely to be overwhelmed” by the spread of Omicron.

A source with knowledge of the cabinet’s thinking told the paper that “people are viewing 26 January as a waypoint for relaxing rather than maintaining the status quo or ramping up”, adding that the government was “working on the basis” that measures would end.

A Whitehall figure cautioned that it is “too soon” to definitively state that restrictions would end, while confirming “data isn’t currently tracking towards worst-case outcomes”.

As the UK begins to prepare for an end to Covid measures, a WHO special envoy has warned that the virus could pose a “difficult” situation in other countries over the coming three months, adding: “We can see the end in sight.”

Dr David Nabarro, chair of global health at Imperial’s Institute of Global Health Innovation, told Sky News: “I’m afraid we are moving through the marathon but there’s no actual way to say that we’re at the end – we can see the end in sight, but we’re not there. And there’s going to be some bumps before we get there.

“First of all, this virus is continuing to evolve – we have Omicron but we’ll get more variants. Secondly, it really is affecting the whole world. Whilst health services in western Europe are just about coping, in many other parts of the world, they are completely overwhelmed. People have just got to keep working and so there are some very tough choices for politicians right now. It’s going to be difficult for the next three months at least.”