Britain must learn to live with Covid as it may be with us forever, health minister Sajid Javid said on Thursday, adding that the UK was moving ahead of other countries as the government lifted coronavirus measures.
"We need to learn to live with it. Sadly people die of flu as well: in a bad flu year you can sadly lose about 20,000 lives, but we don't shut down our entire country," MrJavid told Sky News.
"Covid is not going away. It's going to be with us for many, many years, perhaps forever, and we have to learn to live with it... I think we are leading Europe in the transition from pandemic to endemic and we're leading the way in showing the world how you can live with Covid."
The comments come following the axing of Plan B restrictions by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Mr Johnson, speaking to the House of Commons after a tumultuous PMQS, said that working from guidance, a requirement to wear face masks and the use of Covid passports in some settings would be dropped.
He said more than 90 per cent of over-60s across the UK had now had booster vaccines to protect them, and scientists believed the Omicron wave had peaked.
He said the Government had taken a “different path” to much of Europe and the “data are showing that, time and again, this Government got the toughest decisions right”.
People will no longer be told to work from home and, from Thursday next week when Plan B measures lapse, mandatory Covid certification will end, Mr Johnson said.
