Covid-19 could resemble the common cold by spring next year as people’s immunity to the virus is boosted by vaccines and exposure, a leading expert has said.

Professor Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, said the country “is over the worst” and things “should be fine” once winter has passed, adding that there was continued exposure to the virus even in people who are vaccinated, Press Association has reported.

Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert recently told a Royal Society of Medicine webinar that viruses tend to become weaker as they spread around.

She said: “We normally see that viruses become less virulent as they circulate more easily and there is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of Sars-CoV-2.

“We tend to see slow genetic drift of the virus and there will be gradual immunity developing in the population as there is to all the other seasonal coronaviruses.”

Seasonal coronaviruses cause colds, and Dame Sarah said: “Eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those.”

Sir John told Times Radio: “If you look at the trajectory we’re on, we’re a lot better off than we were six months ago.

“So the pressure on the NHS is largely abated. If you look at the deaths from Covid, they tend to be very elderly people, and it’s not entirely clear it was Covid that caused all those deaths.

“So I think we’re over the worst of it now.

“And I think what will happen is, there will be quite a lot of background exposure to Delta (variant), we can see the case numbers are quite high, that particularly in people who’ve had two vaccines if they get a bit of breakthrough symptomatology, or not even symptomatology – if they just are asymptomatically infected, that will add to our immunity substantially, so I think we’re headed for the position Sarah describes probably by next spring would be my view.

“We have to get over the winter to get there but I think it should be fine.”

He stressed its important that we don’t panic about our current situation, that “the number of severe infections and deaths from Covid remains very low”.

He reiterated that Covid vaccines prevent serious illness and death, but don’t “effectively reduce the amount of transmission”.

He said: “If everybody’s expecting the vaccines and the boosters to stop that, they won’t. And it’s slightly a false promise.”

Agreeing with England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, he stated children would likely get Covid without being vaccinated, stating “this is now an endemic virus, it’ll circulate pretty widely”.

But Sir John said there are “no bad consequences” in children with the virus, adding that “I don’t think there’s any reason to panic”.

“I don’t think we’re going to have a lot of children in intensive care units. And in fact, the evidence is we don’t, we never have. And the likelihood of severe disease (is) quite small.”