Some hospitals ‘look like a warzone’ as they struggle with the huge strain caused by the second wave of Covid-19, the Government’s chief scientific adviser has said.

Sir Patrick Vallance said the situation in the health service is ‘very, very bad at the moment’ with staff under ‘enormous pressure’.

He told Sky News: ‘In some cases it looks like a war zone in terms of the things that people are having to deal with.’

The UK recorded a further 1,610 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday – the highest number reported on a single day since the outbreak began – bringing the country’s total to 91,470.

Sir Patrick said the numbers of infections and deaths ‘are nowhere near where they need to be’ before consideration can be given to lifting lockdown restrictions, adding: ‘This is a really difficult, dangerous situation we’re in, and we need to get the numbers down, so I don’t see a release of these measures as being a sensible thing to do in the short term.’

He said it was hoped that as the vaccine took effect and numbers dropped, it would be possible to start a gradual release of some of the measures.

The chief scientific adviser went on: ‘But I think it’s important to recognise this is not going to be a sort of big bang, “great, take the lid off, everything’s fine, we can all go back to normal”.

‘This is going to be a slow release, monitoring carefully, understanding the effects.’

Sir Patrick said it is ‘quite likely that we are going to need regular vaccination, at least for a few years’ and echoed Professor Chris Whitty’s suggestion that some form of restrictions may still be needed next winter.

He said: ‘I think coming this winter, a lot will be better because the vaccination will have been rolled out across a very large proportions of society. And hopefully if we can really bring the numbers down now and with the test and trace and isolate system in a much better place, that will lead us into a much better position in the summer and then going into next winter.

‘As (chief medical officer) Chris Whitty has said as well, I don’t think that we can assume that there won’t be anything needed next winter.

‘Now, it’s more likely to be making sure that we wear masks in certain places, making sure that we keep up with hand washing, making sure that we’re sensible about the way in which we interact with people in indoor environments – that’s the sort of thing that you might anticipate.

‘But this virus has taken us by surprise time and time again and we just don’t know.

‘I’d be very surprised if we go on year on year with needing to do things more than that. But this coming winter, I think we need to wait and see how far we get on with the current reduction in numbers that needs to occur.’

On Israel’s claims that efficacy from the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine may be as low as 33%, Sir Patrick said studies showed that from day 10 after vaccination to 21 days and beyond, it was ‘much more like 89%’, though he admitted ‘when you get into real-world practice things are seldom quite as good as clinical trials’.

He added: ‘It probably won’t be as high as that in practice, but I don’t think it’ll be as low as the figures you’ve just given.’

Sir Patrick was also asked what could have been done differently to tackle the pandemic from the outset.

He said: ‘We will have got some things right and some things wrong, and we’ve learned a lot as we’ve gone through this, and we know a lot more about the virus today than we did then, for sure.

‘I think there is a very simple series of recommendations which I’ve been pushing continuously and I’ll continue to do so, which is the lesson is: go earlier than you think you want to, go a bit harder than you think you want to, and go a bit broader than you think you want to, in terms of applying the restrictions.

‘I’m afraid that’s a grim message but that is what the evidence says – you’ve got to go hard, early and broader if you’re going to get on top of this. Waiting and watching simply doesn’t work.’

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