COVID-19 will never become an endemic disease and will continue to cause outbreaks in pockets of under-vaccinated and unvaccinated people for years to come, a leading epidemiologist predicts.

Professor Raina MacIntyre suggests, however, that health authorities should still be able to control the spread of the virus and treat it like measles, which was officially eliminated in Australia in 2014 but still causes occasional outbreaks.

The warning from Professor MacIntyre, head of the biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney, comes amid the ongoing debate over easing restrictions in NSW and Victoria when double-dose vaccination rates reach a 70% threshold for the adult population.

Professor MacIntyre is a member of OzSAGE, a new self-styled thinktank of scientists, doctors and epidemiologists offering advice on pandemic strategies, which believes eradication of SARS-CoV-2 is unlikely but elimination region by region could be possible.