Professor Christina Pagel of University College London told INews: “Unfortunately, it is likely that this JN.1 wave has not yet peaked and will peak mid-January, either next week or the week after.
“And then infections will stay very high for a few weeks on the downward slope, too.
“I am sure this wave will rival the first two Omicron waves in 2022 and might even exceed them.”
Speaking to the Sun, Prof Peter Openshaw, from Imperial College London, said, “Immunity falls over time, and for many, it’s been over a year since they had their last booster jabs.”
The number of Brits getting vaccinated is not the only thing to have changed – the virus is also evolving.
Vaccines and natural immunity only work when a strong match between the antibody and the virus is circulating.
The more a virus mutates, the less effective antibodies are at fighting it.
“The virus circulating now is quite different from the one we saw in 2020,” Prof Peter said.
“The new virus has become so much better at transmitting from person to person, and it’s likely only going to get better.
“It’s also much better at evading the current immunity from infection and vaccination.”
It is important to stress that the Covid bug, generally, is less virulent and dangerous now than it was in 2020.
This comes as Marian Van Kerkhove, M.D., who led the WHO’s response to the virus, warns that Covid-19 is “still a pandemic.”
She said: “It’s still a global health threat and it’s still a pandemic causing far too many (re)infections, hospitalizations, deaths and long covid when tools exist to prevent them.
“It’s marked by complacency. I will never accept that there is an ‘acceptable level of [death]’ (something I’m asked) for [COVID]. We are talking about people, parents, children, people who laugh, love, dream.
“Governments must not be complacent, individuals must not be complacent. We have all gone through something traumatic with #COVID19. The world shut down, we lost millions of our loved ones, billions have been personally affected by COVID. We cannot forget. [WHO] will not forget.”
