People may wear masks in crowded places forever, a top doctor has warned.

Doctor Bharat Pankhania, who is a clinical lecturer at Exeter University, and is Southend Council's advisor in the pandemic also said plans are in place for a third dose of the Covid vaccines in the autumn.

During an online question and answer session with Rabbi Warren Elf, from Southend District Synagogue, Doctor Pankhania said a day will come there is no need for masks.

He said: "These vaccines irrespective of what platform we use either the Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna or AstraZeneca (Oxford) they offer considerable protection. The first dose, we call it the priming dose gives you a considerable immuned response and then the second dose primes and boosts the immune response.

"We have found that it prevents the vast majority, not everyone, from severe disease so this is another reason to take the vaccine as severe disease means you might end of on a ventilate and means you might die.

"We have also found with the vaccines it reduces the infection among people who have been immunised so whilst you might get mild to moderate illness you are not shedding a lot of virus and this means you're unlikely to see a lot of new cases.

"Two weeks after the second dose you will have the maximum protection at that point it becomes safer to interact with other people and the best solution is if they have been immunised too, then it becomes ok to interact with each other and I expect the UK policy to enable this that both people are immunised they may interact with each other to come to be.

"This has come to be in America, the CDC what I would like to also emphasis is you must always be on your guard you must never drop your guard this is very important.

"You keep on maintaining your guard until you've had your second vaccination plus two weeks.

"I foresee some people will continue to wear masks in crowded places forever, because the evidence has clearly demonstrated that if we adopt the far eastern practices of wearing a mask you have fewer cases of the common cold and infections like influenza and your sore throats. So some people may choose to wear the masks in crowded places forever and there's nothing wrong with that."

"Some people will lovingly abandon the masks as soon as possible and I can see that when a substantial percentage of the popular has been fully immunised and there is very little virus in community circulation therefore that it becomes unnecessary to protect yourself with a mask because the popular is immune, there is very little virus in circulation and you regain what we used to have as common practice in the west such as not wearing a mask."

The top doctor said that time will come but he doesn't think that time is June 21. He said if we continue to keep case numbers down and immunisation up and that no vaccine evading variations emerge then the end is insight.

He added: "We have already got plans to immunise in the autumn with a third dose we feel we do not know for sure how long the immunity lasts we cant sit and find out the immunity has not lasted therefore a better strategy is that in the autumn we use a single dose vaccine to boost the already given immunity that we are now giving to people."