CORONAVIRUS is “here to stay” and will have to be managed like flu in the long-term, Scotland’s top doctor has said.
Interim chief medical officer Dr Gregor Smith forecast Covid-19 becoming “endemic” and said it would still need to be managed well after the initial lockdown phase had passed.
Dr Smith was speaking at the Scottish Government’s daily briefing as new figures showed the virus had claimed at least 962 lives in Scotland, a quarter of them in care homes.
Asked about Covid-19 becoming “the new normal” given a vaccine could take a year or two to develop, Dr Smith said: “I think we’re all coming to the realisation that coronavirus is here and it’s here to stay with us.
“We need to find ways to deal with that in the longer term, not [just] the shorter term.
“We’ve done the same in the past, when you think about it, with flu.
“Because flu is one of those other very dangerous circulating pathogens that actually has just become endemic in our society, and comes around on a cyclical basis.
“We need to be able to respond to that in a way that takes a different type of approach, a different counter measure, to try to make sure that we reduce the risk of harm to people in our society. I think we’ll come to the same position over time with coronavirus.”
He went on: “At the moment, the tools in our armoury are to make sure that we suppress that disease down as far as possible to protect those that are most vulnerable.
“But in the future I can foresee a time when we’ll be taking similar approaches as we do currently to flu, and we’ll be looking to other mechanisms.
“Some of that will be about the development of new approaches and medicines, and some of that will be about the development of vaccines.
“But to get there, first we need to take these unusual and quite severe measures to make sure that we protect those who are most vulnerable in our society.”
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon added: “Coronavirus is not simply going to go away, and that I think we know for certain.
“We know a vaccine is still some time away, although hopefully not that far away. So we’re going to have to continue and to manage and suppress the virus for sometime to come.”
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