CUMBRIA’S public health chief has said it may be up to 18 months before life returns to normal due to coronavirus.

Colin Cox said restrictions could still be in place long into the future.

“If you are looking at complete lifting of everything it’s going to be a long time to come,” he said.

“It will be between 12 to 18 months until we have a vaccine and we will need some sort of restrictions until we have a vaccine.

“It won’t be the current level of lockdown, but some degree of normality is still some time away.”

Despite the need for restrictions deep into the future, the director of public health believes the county is about to turn a corner in terms of the virus.

At the NHS trust which runs Furness General Hospital in Barrow, as well as Royal Lancaster Infirmary, the number of fatalities is now 114.

Figures released by NHS England show that - despite hopes that the pandemic may be nearing its peak in Cumbria - the county has in the last three or four days seen the disease continue to claim lives, with six deaths being reported on Sunday alone in the hospitals managed by University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust.

A further four patient deaths from Covid-19 were reported by the trust on Monday.

The overall number of coronavirus fatalities at the two NHS trusts with Cumbrian hospitals is currently 193. The figures were released as it was confirmed that The UK's coronavirus death toll is nearing 13,000 after another 801 people sadly lost their lives in the last 24 hours.

Mr Cox said the rise in hospital fatalities caused by Covid-19 appeared to be levelling off. “It’s getting more likely that we are approaching the peak in mortalities,” he said.

“Obviously, these figures are for only hospital deaths and clearly care home deaths and other deaths in the community are another issue.”

Cumbria’s Assistant Chief Constable Andy Slattery, who leads Cumbria’s multi-agency resilience forum, was also cautiously optimistic as he considered the latest figures.

He said: “In terms of hospital admissions and deaths, it appears to be stabilising to some extent.

“But we don’t know whether this is a temporary phenomenon or whether it’s a just a pause in the increase.

"There is very much a feeling that this is the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end.

"It’s going to be a longer-term issue for the UK and a longer term issue for the county.”