An Oxford University professor has warned that it is unlikely coronavirus will ever be eliminated.

Professor Sir John Bell told MPs: ‘The reality is that this pathogen is here forever, it isn’t going anywhere. Look at how much trouble they’ve had in eliminating, for example, polio, that eradication programme has been going on for 15 years and they’re still not there.’

His intervention came as another top scientist and member of the influential SAGE group poured cold water on the prime minister’s claim that life could return to normal by Christmas – suggesting Covid-19 will in fact be around for ‘decades to come’. 

Sir John continued: ‘This is going to come and go, and we’re going to get winters where we get a lot of this virus back in action. The vaccine is unlikely to have a durable effect that’ll last for a very long time so we’re going to have to have a continual cycle of vaccinations, and then more disease, and more vaccinations and more disease.

‘So I think the idea that we’re going to eliminate it across the population, that’s just not realistic.’

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He said one of the UK’s biggest failures was not being on the ‘front foot’ in preparation for a pandemic.

He told MPs: ‘The fact that we were asleep to the concept that we were going to have a pandemic, I think, shame on us.

‘Since the year 2000 we’ve had eight close calls of emerging infectious diseases, any one of which could have swept the globe as a pandemic.

‘This is not new and I think we should not be proud of the fact that we ended up with a system which had no resilience to pandemics.’

Meanwhile the Wellcome Trust director and Sage member Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar said the world will be living with Covid-19 for ‘decades to come’.

Referencing Boris Johnson’s suggestion that life could have a ‘significant return to normality from November at the earliest… possibly in time for Christmas’, Sir Jeremy said: ‘Things will not be done by Christmas. This infection is not going away, it’s now a human endemic infection.

‘Even, actually, if we have a vaccine or very good treatments, humanity will still be living with this virus for very many, many years to come.’

It is hoped that a vaccine could be found – perhaps by the team at Oxford University, whose trial showed promising early signs yesterday – and help life return to normality. But many experts, including the government’s chief scientific adviser and chief medical officer – have warned not to expect one to definitely be found, and that a successful candidate is highly unlikely to be rolled out this year.

Sir Jeremy also criticised the timing of the lockdown, saying: ‘I believe lockdown was too late, I believe lockdown should have come in earlier.’

Francis Crick Institute director Sir Paul Nurse said large numbers of health workers were infected at the height of the pandemic and spread the illness.

‘At the height of the pandemic, our own research, and of course that only backs up what’s been done elsewhere, is that up to 45% of healthcare workers were infected,’ he said.

‘And they were infecting their colleagues, they were infecting patients, yet they weren’t been tested systematically.’

Sir John said hospitals were afraid of having to send staff home if they tested positive for Covid-19.

‘As time went on, there still wasn’t a real push to do (screen) healthcare workers,’ he said.

‘And it sort of went on, and on, and on. And indeed there was a suspicion, which I think is probably correct, that NHS institutions and the NHS were avoiding testing their hospital workers because they were afraid they would find the kind of levels that Paul’s described (45%), and they would have to send everyone home, and as a result not have a workforce.’

An NHS spokesman said: ‘Actually, 1.1 million NHS staff have had an antibody test.’

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