People could soon be back to normal life with coronavirus measures scaled back by Easter, a Norfolk expert had said.
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Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said Covid will eventually be regarded as a cause of the common cold and will not warrant the reporting of daily case numbers.
He said "We're going to have to let people who are [Covid] positive go about their normal lives as they would do with any other cold.
"I think the whole issue of how long are we going to be able to allow people to self-isolate if they're positive is going to have to be discussed fairly soon, because I think this is a disease that's not going away."
He added that once Omicron has been dealt with "maybe we should start to look at scaling back [on restrictions]".
He told BBC Breakfast: "Covid is only one virus of a family of coronaviruses, and the other coronaviruses throw off new variants typically every year or so, and that's almost certainly what's going to happen with Covid - it will become effectively just another cause of the common cold.
"So personally, I think it would be unlikely that we are going to do anything like that whilst we're still coping with Omicron, but once we're past Easter, perhaps, then maybe we should start to look at scaling back, depending on, of course, what the disease is at that time."
The government has come under pressure to reduce the Covid self-isolation period from seven days.
But minister for disabled people, health and work, and Norwich North MP, Chloe Smith said: "There are no current plans in England to change that period.
"Of course, we have actually only recently taken it down from 10 to seven, and we want to look at that - we want to make sure that that is working as we believe it ought to.
"We think the current period, therefore, is the right one, so we haven't any plans to change that further."
Professor Hunter said while coronavirus cases are still rising it was not as rapidly as a week ago.
He added: "We're already seeing a big difference in the risk to people who have been boosted being a lot less than the people have not been boosted."
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