Life after lockdown: Test and trace, mask wearing and social distancing likely to stick around even after mass vaccinations, says BMA NI chair Dr Tom Black

Dr Tom Black, who chairs the British Medical Association’s Northern Ireland committee, said that when vaccines begin to reduce the number of deaths and hospital admissions from the virus the “focus” will shift to “bearing down” on sporadic outbreaks as and when they happen.

But even when the draconian lockdown restrictions in place right now are lifted, Dr Black said it is likely some public health measures will stick around – potentially until 2023.

“The predictable thing that we have is that we are vaccinating,” he said. “Most of the over-80s are now vaccinated and within two weeks I would expect most of the over-70s will be vaccinated by the GP vaccination programme.

“We are also working on the over-65s and we will soon be working on the clinically extremely vulnerable.

“What that does over the next, probably about two months by the time those folks get their second vaccines, is reduced admissions to hospital, reduced deaths, reduced demands on intensive care units.”

He added: “That will change the narrative to some extent from looking at hospitals being overwhelmed and looking at the number of deaths every day to a position where the focus will be on transmission rates and outbreaks.

“When the focus moves away from the deaths and the hospital sector being overwhelmed, we will be able to focus much more on test, track and trace.

“We will be able to focus on localised outbreaks and bear down on those localised outbreaks and identify the problems that are causing them.

“Things will change in that respect. Hopefully we will be able to get children back to school in the next two months. Hopefully we will be able to ease some of the restrictions.”

Asked what society might look like once the overwhelming majority of the population have been vaccinated, Dr Black said: “The problem to some extent that we will have at that extent will be the efficacy of the different vaccines – you have seen the numbers.

“Let’s imagine we’re lucky and it’s 90% for all of them, that’s still a 10% chance of catching the infection. Now, the majority of people who have two vaccines even if they catch the infection will hopefully not require admission to hospital.

“But if you were clinically extremely vulnerable and there was an outbreak in your area, you would definitely be worried that you might be the one that lands in hospital.

“Obviously the community around you would be expected to be very careful.

“So there will be a continuation of social distancing and mask wearing, I would expect, for the rest of this year – and possibly next year.

“We will have to be careful about outbreaks and we will have to be careful about sporadic cases, vulnerable elderly people, and extremely vulnerable people catching infections and coming to harm.

“Even within those parameters, we will have a much more normal society but it will come in increments.”