Brits will face “very socially disruptive” lockdown measures for the rest of the year, England’s Chief Medical Adviser has warned, as he stressed the coronavirus disease will be here for the “foreseeable future”.

Professor Chris Whitty made the comments at yesterday’s Downing Street press briefing, as the Government announced new and “very large scale” measures to trace the spread of Covid-19 in the general population.

It comes as human vaccine trials are set to begin today, after Health Secretary Matt Hancock confirmed £41 million of additional investment for research taking place at Oxford University and Imperial College London.

Mr Hancock told the Commons on Tuesday he was confident the country was at the peak of the virus outbreak but insisted continued social distancing was needed to bring the number of new cases down, as the death toll in hospitals rose past 18,000.

A major publisher has reported a huge increase in the sales of books about the spread of viruses and diseases, according to a reading charity.

The Reading Agency said Penguin Classics had experienced a 1393 per cent increase in sales of The Viral Storm by the biologist Nathan Wolfe, which explores the spread of contagions.

Journal Of The Plague Year, which is a fictional account of the spread of disease in London written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1722, has also had a 750 per cent rise in sales...Read More….

Read Also: Second spike in coronavirus cases would trigger another lockdown and prolong economic pain, Dominic Raab warns

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