How do we learn to live with Covid?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Plan B Covid restrictions in England have ended and the government says we must learn to live with Covid. But what does that actually mean and how sustainable is that position?
In this programme we will ask how our understanding of Covid’s newest variant, Omicron, has evolved since Plan B restrictions were first imposed 7 weeks ago. To what extent might flu provide a model for how we live with Covid? And how will our hospitals cope with the strain as restrictions within wider society are eased?
David Aaronovitch is joined by:
Azra Ghani, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College, London Saffron Cordery, Deputy Chief Executive of NHS Providers Lesley Powls, Head of Clinical Site & Emergency Planning, King's College Hospital Emma Thomson, Professor of infectious diseases at the University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research Linda Bauld, Professor of public health at Edinburgh University
Producers: Rosamund Jones, Kirsteen Knight and Ben Carter Studio manager: Neil Churchill Production co-ordinators: Sophie Hill and Siobhan Reed Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.5 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Aronovich. |
| 0:09.2 | The briefing room is the mind chamber where in 28 minutes, |
| 0:12.7 | you and I get to understand a big issue with the help of the top experts on the subject. |
| 0:17.7 | This week, what does living with COVID actually mean? |
| 0:25.7 | COVID is not going away, it's going to be with us for many, many years, perhaps forever, |
| 0:31.0 | and we have to learn to live with it, said the health secretary, Sajid Javid last week. |
| 0:37.6 | So what does learning to live with COVID actually mean? |
| 0:42.1 | And have we almost reached that point? |
| 0:45.0 | Step inside the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 0:51.3 | But first, how has our understanding of COVID's newest variant, Omicron, evolved since Plan B restrictions were first imposed seven weeks ago? |
| 1:01.6 | Azragani is Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London. |
| 1:07.0 | Asri Garni, what are the latest infection numbers? |
| 1:09.7 | We're seeing, of course, a rapid decline since the beginning of January. |
| 1:13.7 | So we're now hovering under the 100,000 per day reported cases. |
| 1:18.6 | It seems to have plateaued a little bit in recent days. |
| 1:21.9 | But what that is masking is quite a variable pattern in different age groups. |
| 1:26.9 | The major place where we've seen the increase |
| 1:28.8 | is in children, that's both primary age and secondary school age, and that is not, of course, |
| 1:33.8 | that's surprising because transmission in that group will have been interrupted over the Christmas |
| 1:38.2 | holidays and has started up again now that there is more mixing back at school. In the older adult groups overall, we've |
| 1:46.4 | seen declines, but we are concerned that there may be some increase now as transmission goes |
... |
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