Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Masks could be needed for another year, warns government chief scientific adviser

Patrick Vallance’s warning comes on day vaccination starts in UK 

Rory Sullivan
Tuesday 08 December 2020 23:56 GMT
Comments
Fans arrive wearing masks to watch a football match at the Abbey Stadium in Cambridge on 5 December, 2020.
Fans arrive wearing masks to watch a football match at the Abbey Stadium in Cambridge on 5 December, 2020. (PA)
Leer en Español

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

People living in the UK may need to use face masks until next winter as life is unlikely to return to normal before then, the government’s chief scientific adviser has said.

Patrick Vallance gave the warning on the day that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was first rolled out across the UK.

Although acknowledging it was a “tremendous day” for science, Mr Vallance told Sky News that the public should remain on its guard.

"It may be that next winter even with vaccination we need measures like masks in place - we don't know yet how good all the vaccines are going to be at preventing the transmission of the virus,” he said.

This is because it is not yet clear whether vaccinated people, most of whom it is believed will be immune from the disease, can pass the virus onto those who have not had a vaccine.

The government adviser also offered pointers on the length of the vaccine rollout, saying it would “take quite a long time” to administer jabs to all those who are at-risk and to those in hard-to-reach groups.

"It's very important that we understand this is the start of something. It's going to take quite a long time to get the vaccines out very widely,” he said.

As a consequence, people would not feel things starting to return to normal until about spring, he added.  

While celebrating the beginning of the NHS’ mass vaccination programme, the chief scientific adviser denounced “vaccine nationalism”, saying the vaccine effort “has been a global one”.

This comes just days after education secretary Gavin Williamson was widely condemned for claiming that the UK was vaccinating its population before other nations because it was a “better country”.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in