Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether COVID-19 will be (1) endemic, or (2) eliminated.
Total eradication of COVID-19 globally is unlikely (unless there is some unexpected biological change in the virus). Elimination nationally (i.e. bringing the number of locally acquired cases to zero) may be possible transiently but is highly unlikely to be possible permanently. Though other countries appear to have eliminated the virus locally, it is still early in the epidemic and the virus is very likely to reappear in these countries. Instead of eradication/elimination, a realistic public health goal would be to have very good control of transmission so that the number of new cases, and therefore the disease burden, is very low.