Coronavirus will be present "forever in some form or another", a member of the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has said.
Sir Mark Walport said people would need to be vaccinated at regular intervals.
His comments come after the head of the World Health Organization
(WHO) said he hoped the pandemic would be over within two years, as the Spanish flu had taken two years to overcome.
Sir Mark said denser populations and travel meant the virus spread easily.
He also said the world population was now much larger than in 1918.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Sir Mark said that, in order to control the pandemic, "global vaccination" would be required, but coronavirus would not be a disease like smallpox "which could be eradicated by vaccination".
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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, London and it is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over
Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. In humans, coronaviruses cause respiratory tract infections that are typically mild, such as the common cold, though rarer forms such as SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 can be lethal. Symptoms vary in other species: in chickens
they cause an upper respiratory tract disease, while in cows and pigs they cause diarrhea. There are yet to be vaccines or antiviral drugs to prevent or treat human coronavirus infections.