Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, has said that the UK is "going to have to live with" COVID-19, BBC News reported on Wednesday.

Prof Pollard, speaking to the Commons Science and Technology Committee, was quoted as saying that "variants and their emergence" will "continue to happen".

He added: "But in the end, we're going to have to come back to focusing on the really important public health issue, which is the hospitalisation and the death. If transmission is disconnected by vaccine immunity from the severe disease, to a large extent, then we'll need to monitor new variants, perhaps, if we need to find new vaccines and so on - but we are going to have to live with it being in our communities and transmitting."