COVID-19 is unlikely ever to be eradicated and the outlook for the pandemic remains "pretty bleak" in the medium term, leading UK government scientists say.
England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said the world will continue to register a "significant" number of deaths unless more effort is made to vaccinate the vulnerable globally.
And he warned that while coronavirus may become a "much milder, chronic disease" in the long term, new variants will continue to cause problems.
Speaking at a Royal Society online event about COVID-19 on Thursday, Prof Whitty said that "in the medium term, the outlook still looks pretty bleak around the world".
"I would really reiterate that until we have got a situation where we have induced immunity in those who are most vulnerable everywhere in the world, we will continue to see really significant morbidity and mortality from this virus," he said.
Prof Whitty said that while time and science "was on our side," the virus was not "going to go away".
Professor Wendy Barclay, who is advising the UK government's response to the virus, said there was "a lot to do" in the medium term in order to bring the pandemic under control.
"We will not eradicate this virus," she said.
"It is so far spread around the world and the vaccines do not necessarily completely prevent transmission. I think we will live with the derivatives of Sars-Cov-2 for a very long time."
Dr Katrina Lythgoe, from the University of Oxford's Big Data Institute, said only two viruses have ever been eradicated through vaccination - smallpox and rinderpest.
She said failure to provide poorer countries with vaccines will also result in more potentially resistant variants of the virus "constantly coming at our shores".
Australian Associated Press
