VACCINES may make it “slightly easier” to spread as people don’t know they have the virus, a regional top doctor has said.

Dr David Strain, a clinical lead for coronavirus in the south west, told BBC Radio Wiltshire on Thursday morning: “The spread of the virus is more about our behaviour.

“The virus is still spreading from person to person and one of the things that a vaccination does that stops you getting symptoms and stops you having appreciable illness from a disease, in many ways it actually can make it slightly easier for that to spread because more people don’t know that they’ve got the virus.”

More than 32m people have received the first dose of the vaccine.

However, the Prime Minister has warned that as lockdown is eased the UK will “inevitably” see infection rates rise.

Speaking earlier this week, Boris Johnson said: “Of course the vaccination programme has helped, but the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.

“So, as we unlock, the result will inevitably be that we will see more infection, sadly we will see more hospitalisation and deaths.

“People have just got to understand that.”

Dr Strain told the BBC: “One of the key steps in the release of the lockdown that we’re going through at the moment is just make sure we take things easy. If we follow the plan as it stands at the moment, it is reasonably predictable that we’re going to get to at least the end of summer before there’s any signs of any further waves."

He pointed to the five week gap between lockdown measures being eased this week, allowing people to go to beer gardens and salons, and the next phase. "We know it takes a good four weeks now, on the learnings of the previous easings it takes four weeks for the impact of each easing to be in play before we actually see that in new cases and new hospitalisations.

“The reason we’ve got this five week gap between April 12 and May 17 is because at four weeks we’ll be able to properly evaluate what impact mixing outdoors has had.”

There was “a lot of concern” about people meeting indoors, where ventilation was poorer.