How worried should we be about a third wave?

At the beginning of the year, Boris Johnson and his advisers were at pains to tell us that by spring we would be in a vastly better situation with Covid. Well, spring is here, the number of new infections and deaths is falling by around 30 per cent week on week, deaths are back to where they were last October and new infections last September. The vaccine programme is running on time, and take-up has been high. Why, then, was the chief medical officer Chris Whitty so downbeat when he addressed the House of Commons science and technology committee this morning?

He told MPs that he was expecting a further surge of Covid ‘with significant numbers but much fewer deaths’ either in the summer or next autumn or winter — with the likelihood that, given the seasonality of the virus, that it would be the latter. Significant numbers of people will still be vulnerable, he said, either because they couldn’t have the vaccine or because they had refused it.