Uncertain future as we may face living with coronavirus for years
Covid is set to stay for years to come according to a Staffordshire health boss – and some measures will need to remain in place to control its spread, writes Kerry Ashdown
THOSE hoping that coronavirus would be a pandemic of the past by the start of 2022 may be disappointed to hear that the county’s health and wellbeing board has been considering how it will affect the area in the years leading up to 2030.
As residents and businesses look forward to the gradual easing of national lockdown restrictions those responsible for health and care services have been preparing to deal with future cases of Covid – and looking at best and worst case scenarios.
Dr Richard Harling, director of health and care at Staffordshire County Council, told last Thursday’s board meeting: “I think it’s safe to say we are going to be living with Covid for many years to come.
“The virus has become endemic. I do not believe we are going to be able to eradicate it and therefore it will be circulating in our communities, probably in perpetuity. That means we will need to maintain a series of Covid defences and hopefully we will have control over as many of those as possible.
“I think the future is quite uncertain. There are a wide range of plausible scenarios and while we should all hope for the best we need to make sure we are planning and prepared for the full spectrum of what might befall us.”
The meeting heard that measures including testing, contact tracing, isolation and outbreak management would need to be continued as part of all scenarios.
Dr Harling said: “We will need to make sure we have facilities available for testing both people with symptoms and regular asymptomatic testing for as many people as possible, as frequently as possible.”
A ‘minimum level’ of Covid-security measures will also be considered, the meeting heard, which included personal and environmental hygiene and a degree of social distancing. The situation is currently considered to be moving towards a more optimistic scenario, Dr Harling said, which was to be welcomed. But it remained ‘extremely volatile’ and the risk that new variants of the virus could ‘take off’ as lockdown was eased remained.