LONDON (Reuters) – Britain will see a resurgence in coronavirus cases at some point and can’t bring deaths from COVID-19 down to zero even with a successful vaccine rollout, England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said on Tuesday.
Whitty said that caution in re-opening the economy would affect the size and the timing of a resurgence, but that vaccines would not be able to prevent all deaths from COVID.
“All the modelling suggests there is going to be a further surge and that will find the people who either have not been vaccinated, or where the vaccine has not worked, and some of them will end up in hospital and sadly, some of them will go on to die,” Whitty told lawmakers.
“The ratio of cases to deaths will go right down as a result of vaccination, but not right down to zero, unfortunately.”
(Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by William James)
