While some sort of annual Covid booster for the vulnerable – similar to the flu jab – appears inevitable, Professor Adam Finn, a member of the JCVI, hopes that the wider population will in time be spared.

“While it is always hard to predict the future, I would say it is not going to go on being like this,” says Finn, a professor of paediatrics at Bristol University. “We will generate more immunity and the evolution of the virus will stabilise.”

The lesson of previous pandemics, he says, is that the virus remains “highly unstable” for a period, mutating into new strains before eventually settling down. And, as he points out, we are also adding more tools to our armoury.

On Wednesday it was announced the Government had increased its order of antivirals five-fold, signing contracts for 4.25m courses of pills for vulnerable patients to stave off severe Covid symptoms. The move was in response to criticism that the Government had only ordered 250,000 courses of the new Pfizer “wonder pill”, which has been shown to cut hospitalisations and deaths by nearly 90 per cent. 

As we discover more about the virus, the potency and effectiveness of the vaccines themselves should also improve. There have been reports that military scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the US will shortly announce the discovery of a new, highly-adaptable vaccine which has been two years in the making and will be effective against all SARS and Covid variants, including omicron.

Early in the New Year another US-made vaccine, the two-dose Novavax, will be rolled out across Europe after being granted approval. The UK has ordered 60 million doses of the jab, which delivers proteins, along with immunity-stimulating adjuvants, directly to a person’s cells and in studies has been shown to be 90 per cent effective.

Currently we are largely relying on two mRNA vaccines in the guise of Moderna and Pfizer, which, while successful at boosting immunity, do wane over time. Prof Finn anticipates we will diversify into reformulated vaccines that may offer longer-lasting immunity. The measles, mumps and rubella jab, for example, was originally introduced in 1988 as a single shot but from 1996 was offered over two doses to provide better protection. “At the moment we are just using one tool and that is probably not the best way to run things in the long term,” he says.