UK's Covid-19 social restrictions to remain for 'rest of year'

The British government'schief medical adviser,Chris Whitty, has said that the country will have to live with some disruptive social measures for at least the rest of the yearto prevent fresh outbreaks of Covid-19.

The senior-most medic of UK said it said it was important to be realistic that ''highly disruptive''social distancing would need to be in place for ''really quite a long period of time''.

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In the government's daily coronavirus briefing,Whitty said that the chances ofa vaccine or treatments being ready for use this year are ''incredibly small'' and therefore, social distancing willhave to stay in place to suppress outbreaks until then.

"This disease is not going to be eradicated, it is not going to disappear.So we have to accept that we are working with a disease that we are going to be with globally... for the foreseeable future," he added.

Whitty also said that it was "wholly unrealistic" to expect life would suddenly return to normal soon.

His stark assessment dampened hopes that the lockdown would be largely removed when it is reviewed in just over a fortnight.

However, United Kingdom has already reached the peak of the current epidemic.