DON'T bet on a coronavirus vaccine to end the pandemic, a leading scientist has told MSPs.
Microbiologist Professor Hugh Pennington urged authorities to "test, test, test" and said the killer virus could be "seen off by Christmas" by a combination of checks, social distancing and contact tracing.
Giving evidence to the Scottish Parliament's Health Committee, the Aberdeen University expert – who has previously advised both the Scottish and UK governments – said that while he is "hopeful" of a treatment, he will "not be putting any money on it at this stage".
Stating that the UK does not have the capacity to produce large quantities of a vaccine, he went on: "Probably the best thing we can hope for is a vaccine or a set of vaccines which will be partially protective, and they may not work as well in the elderly because most vaccines don't.
"So to put all our money on a vaccine as the way we can end the current crisis I think will be a mistake because we may never get to that point."
But Pennington said there is "no reason" why coronavirus may not be tackled by Christmas if authorities are "really blasting away" on testing.
He said: "There is already evidence suggesting that immunity against Covid-19 is not particularly strong after infection.
"Many people don't really develop very much in the way of antibodies but they recover from the infection, which might suggest that traditional vaccines are not going to be particularly effective."
The scientist went on: "There's no reason in my view why we shouldn't look at Sars as the model, a virus we managed to control and eradicate, unlike flu, which is a virus we've never managed to eradicate and which kills people every year.
"I don't see any reason why we should be so pessimistic as to follow the flu model, when we know this virus is very different."
Pennington said a failure to employ more robust testing and tracing had been a "policy error", and, in a warning for the future, he said: "There will be other pandemics.
"We have to do better on our pandemic planning, we need to have better stocks of PPE and better testing facilities - not necessarily running, but to deal with surge capacity.
"We don't know when they will happen, we don't know how serious they will be, but if we don't spend the money to have the capacity to cope with them then we'll have the same issues we're having now with Covid-19."
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