Analysis: The original SARS virus disappeared – here's why coronavirus won’t do the same

BRITISH cancer doctor Prof Karol Sikora recently claimed that the current Covid-19 pandemic would “burn itself out”. His thinking is that if there are more infections than we realise, and that those milder, unrecorded infections result in robust immunity, then this would quickly lead to “herd immunity”, leaving the virus nowhere to go but extinct. Extend this to the world’s population and the virus eradicates itself.

In the UK, only an estimated 6.8% of people have had the virus; for France, the figure is just 4.4%.