A professor who sits on the SAGE committee that advises the Government has said that the pre-Covid world 'no longer exists'.
Writing in a Twitter thread, Professor Christina Pagel, who joined the independent committee in May 2020, said: "I keep being asked when we can go 'back to normal' or 'like it was before'.
"My personal thoughts: We've added a new disease to our population, more infectious and more severe than flu. The world pre-2020 no longer exists - we may want it to, but it just doesn't."
Prof Pagel, who is director of the Clinical Operational Research Unit at University College London, said vaccines were "amazing" but do wane, particularly in relation to symptomatic infection.
She added: "Surely Omicron has proven that high levels of antibodies in your population are no guarantee against v high levels of illness & disruption.
"We *could* act as we used to & accept millions of people getting sick once or twice a year. Yearly education, business disruption.
"And gradually, a slightly sicker population. That seems to be the current plan in UK and e.g. US. But that's NOT the *old normal* - it's worse."
Prof Pagel said "we can't go back but we can go forward" if people accept the need for some adaptations, informed by what has been learned over the past two years since the pandemic began.
She said that should include investing in research into making "indoor air as much like the outdoors as possible" as it is known that outdoors is "pretty safe" in terms of virus spread.
Prof Pagel said: "It's *not* easy, but it *is* possible - we did it with clean water, electricity infrastructure, CFCs, telephone and broadband... The best thing about cleaner indoor air is it works against *any* airborne disease and also reduces e.g. allergies."
She said it was key to "vaccinate the world as soon as possible" and to continue work on jabs that were both longer-lasting and more resistant to variants of Covid.
There should also be investment in global infrastructure to support surveillance of new variants. as well as other new infectious diseases, as she said "there will be more".
Prof Pagel added: "Add permanent surveillance of Covid infection rates in UK to existing programmes for flu, measles etc in public health.
"Invest in understanding & treating longer term clinical impacts of Covid, inc organ damage & Long Covid + treatments (eg antivirals) for acute phase.
"We need to urgently increase funding and staffing for NHS if it is expected to cope with regular Covid surges *and* existing backlogs *and* years of understaffing and not enough money. This includes *supporting* existing staff to stay..!"
She said there would still be future surges and it was important to have a plan to deal with these, as per other diseases.
This, she said, should be "a plan which is supported by the rapid outbreak identification & rapid understanding of virulence & transmission we've learned to do so well in the UK!".
That could include the temporary reintroduction of large-scale testing, better quality masks and - in the case of a serious threat from a new variant - targeted test, trace and isolate programmes.
Prof Pagel said: "A plan should *not* mean long national lockdowns, which represent a failure of public health systems. In fact, refusing to do the *learning* in "learning to live with Covid" is the biggest risk for such future lockdowns.
"We also need to invest massively in reducing inequalities: in health, in housing, in workplaces, in sick pay, in education - this will make us more resilient to future outbreaks and reduce ill health and death - from Covid & everything else! Both nationally & globally."
She concluded by saying that the "world is different now. Acting as if it isn't, which UK seems determined to do, may feel good in short term but will result in a new normal worse than the old one. I prefer for us to build a new normal that's *better* than frequent sickness & disruption".
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