‘Too soon to say how Bailiwick will live with Covid in future’
IT IS too soon to say how the Bailiwick might be able to live with Covid in the future, said Director of Public Health Dr Nicola Brink.
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock has been quoted as saying that eventually the country would end up living with Covid-19 as it did with influenza, with the vaccines available making it a treatable disease. When asked about comparing the idea of living with Covid to living with flu, Dr Brink said she could ‘write a PhD thesis on that one’.
Before this could happen the population would need to be immunised against Covid and its variants: ‘We need to see the impact of what these variants are, and see whether that’ll mean we have to have an annual or two-yearly booster system. There is a time where we are going to have to find some sort of equilibrium, I just think it’s too soon to say exactly when that time will be and what that equilibrium will be,’ she said.
Dr Brink said tests for flu were carried out but nobody had been isolated with the virus this year.
This was in line with what was happening in the UK. ‘They have seen very little flu activity there as well.
‘Every single Covid-positive case we test for flu as well, as they do in the UK, and in the UK and ourselves we have seen very little activity.’
It was a similar picture with tests carried out in the Emergency Department of the PEH, added Dr Brink.
