A coronavirus variant "that escapes immunity" could take the world by surprise again, Sir Patrick Vallance has warned. Speaking at a virtual Royal Society conference, the Government's chief scientific adviser for England also said there will be future pandemics which look very different to the current one.
He said: "It's very obvious to everyone in this meeting that there will be a future pandemic. That I think is clear. What's it is going to be, we have no idea.
"It's also clear this one is not over and we've got very high infection rates at the moment. And the room for this virus to evolve remains very large, so we could be taken by surprise again with a variant that escapes immunity."
