on a fragile situation

Covid-19 vaccines have greatly reduced the likelihood of hospitalisation or death from the virus, but “viral evolution had plenty more to throw at us”, writes professor of immunology Danny Altmann at The Guardian. “The onslaught of highly immune-evasive variants was”, for many experts, “unforeseen”. “Having started out brilliantly, the real-life state of play today is self-evidently suboptimal.” Despite having one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, the UK faces an “unhappy equilibrium” of “more than 300,000 new cases a day… with hospital admissions and excess deaths holding steady at a new – high – setpoint”. Now we face “a precarious truce imposed through frequent mRNA boosters to keep the viral caseload ‘manageable’. But there are signs this isn’t sustainable.” Recent surges in Hong Kong, Denmark and Scotland “emphasise the fragility” of the situation. The pandemic “is very much with us and evolving dynamically, with a long, bumpy road ahead”, says Altmann. “The option to sleepwalk through this… is one we adopt at our peril”.