As UK Covid cases fall to lowest level for a year, what could the future look like?

Britain has seen cases fall to their lowest level in a year after enduring record-breaking levels of Covid. Will the disease remain in the background as the country eases back into a life more normal?

Ian Sample explains how the virus is changing and why one expert thinks it won't get down to very low numbers again in our lifetimes.

Britain has weathered two waves of coronaviruses in the past six months. The official figures recorded hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases a day, but the true number of infections was much higher. The surge in immunity has helped to push the cases down.

There are other forces behind the decline in numbers.

With the common cold, cases of Covid rise and fall with the seasons, with more transmission in the winter and less in the summer. There is a period where cases should stop. Dramatic shift in testing habits is an important factor.

Most people have had to pay for Covid tests since April. According to Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, the number of Covid infections detected by the community is less than one in 10.

The daily cases in England have fallen by 98% since the start of the year according to the Covid dashboard. For the first time in a year, they are below 5,000 cases a day.

The Office for National Statistics recorded a fall in the number of infections in England from more than 3 million in the week ending 31 December to 875,000 in the week ending 21 May.

The proportion of people with anti- Covid antibodies is very high after the waves of infections. In England, 99% of over 25s have Covid antibodies, but levels are high even among pre-teens, with 89% or more of those aged 8 years and over carrying antibodies against the virus.

Will cases drop further over the summer?

They may fall a little more and remain low through the summer as people spend more time outdoors, but another rise before the autumn is not out of the question.

With the full relaxation of Covid rules, the steady filling of offices, and people gradually reverting to pre-pandemic behavior, there is plenty of scope for the virus to spread. Protection against infections will be the first line of defence to fail as immunity fades.

Unless another variant intervenes, any rise in cases should not translate into high rates of hospitalisations and deaths.

… but Covid maybe spreading differently

Scientists have noticed a shift in the Scottish data over the past few weeks, with a higher proportion of lateral flow tests coming up positive in more affluent areas.

Prof Kao, who studies infectious disease dynamics at the University of Edinburgh, said it was not clear if this was a long-term effect.

The way Covid is being distributed appears to have changed.

The daily cases fell to the low hundreds in the summer of 2020. It is becoming endemic. We are not going to see low numbers again in our lifetimes.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has proposed an autumn booster programme for people aged 65 and over, as well as frontline health and social care workers and the staff and residents of care homes.

… And it is still evolving

The spring surge of Covid was driven by an Omicron variant called BA.2. Two recent descendants, BA.4 and BA.5 are driving a new wave of Covid in South Africa, which is challenging its dominance in the UK.

Last week, the UK Health Security Agency declared BA.4 and BA.5variants of concern, as new data showed they had a growth advantage over BA.2.

The dominant variant in the US last week was the descendant of BA.2.12.1, which spreads faster still. There is no evidence that any of them cause more severe disease, but the danger comes from reaching more people.