21/12/2022
Dr Daniels said he believed the coronavirus and its associated disease, Covid-19 could be weakening.
He said: "There is a degree of suggestion and some evidence the virus might just be getting a little bit less angry.
"That would be the natural behaviour of viruses. Coronaviruses that now cause the common cold were probably quite good at causing death several thousand years ago.
"But they’re not any longer and this is the natural behaviour of viruses.
"It confers no evolutionary advantage to a virus to kill its host and it confers every evolutionary advantage to sit in the host, not make them very ill but make them walk around infecting lots of other people."
He said intensive care outcomes had improved from a 50:50 chance of dying if a patient was put on a ventilator to a mortality rate of 20 per cent in some cases.
That was not down to the drug discoveries like Dexamethasone and Remdesivir, he said, but better management of cases.
He said: "What’s caused that improvement? Is it all the drugs – definitely not. The drugs have a little bit of an effect, not such a marked effect.
"Is it because we have got better learning about how to manage the condition in general? Yes absolutely.
"The tabloid press love wonder magic bullets and drugs but we have just got better at decision making. We’ve learned better who needs ventilating at what time and when they need to be put prone and so forth."