Sir Ian Diamond, head of the UK's Office for National Statistics, told the BBC today that the country is "moving into a new phase," of dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.
"I think we are moving into a new phase. The virus certainly hasn’t gone away and we need to move into a period of surveillance and real vigilance to identify any outbreaks and move to get on top of them really, really quickly,” Diamond said.
He also said that data indicated that around 3.5 million people (out of a population of almost 67 million) had either already recovered from the virus, or had natural immunity.
"My own belief is that this virus is going to be with us for a very long time and we are going to have to be absolutely vigilant to check we are on top of the outbreaks which will come," he said.