A government adviser gave MPs his view during evidence on lessons learned from the pandemic.
Prof John Edmunds is an infectious diseases expert and a government scientific adviser
It's difficult to know how the toll of the second wave will compare, but roughly the same number of people are currently in hospital with coronavirus as in March when the UK went into a national lockdown. He said no one thought that Tier 3, the toughest restrictions currently being imposed in England, would bring the virus's reproduction rate below one.
"I think it's an almost certainty that we'll have a vaccine that will help us manage this epidemic" in the "not too distant future". She gave as an example of "somewhere in the region of" 150 cases per 100,00, a positivity rate of about 7% and a rate of change of about 60% per week. Mr Hunt has previously raised the question of why advisers did not recommend building a contact-tracing system from March.
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