Dr. Anthony Fauci said it in Davos: COVID can become endemic if another variant does not arise that eludes the immune response to the previous variant. The pharmaceutical company Pfizer has pointed to 2024 as a likely date for this to happen. But in general, doctors in different countries of the world have pointed out that COVID-19 will become endemic at some point. And what will life be like then?
The Omicron variant has a high level of contagiousness capable of infecting vaccinated and unvaccinated people, which has exposed a large number of the world’s population to the virus that has developed antibodies, T cells and B cells, explained Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, to News 19.
“What an endemic phase of a viral infection means is that it does not cause the terrible hospitalizations of the pandemic phase, but that we will have enough immunity of a population to keep it at low levels”, he added.
However, according to Dr. Catherine Smallwood, senior officer of emergencies and incident manager of COVID-19 of the World Health Organization (WHO), there is no need to ring the bells on the fly, because “we are still far” from achieving endemicity.
How Or will the endemic COVID change our lives?
Dr. Gandhi explained that, according to her perspective, when the COVID-19 becomes an endemic infection “we will probably not wear masks, distancing, contact tracing, or asymptomatic testing.” The medical and social management of the disease will then resemble the way we manage influenza, that is, with vaccinations, treatment and the recommendation to use masks for vulnerable people, especially in closed environments.
Pfizer specialists have pointed out that achieving the endemic level depends on how COVID-19 evolves and on the efficiency with which vaccines are applied in the population. most of the world. “It looks like over the next year or two, some regions will transition to an endemic model, while other regions will continue to be in pandemic mode,” said Mikael Dolsten, chief scientific officer at Pfizer. “The emergence of new variants could also affect the way the pandemic continues to develop,” he added.
It is still early to know if Ómicron may be the beginning of the endemic COVID. “It is an open question whether or not Ómicron will be the live virus vaccine that everyone expects, because there is great variability with new variants emerging,” said Dr. Fauci during his participation in the Davos Economic Forum. So the coin is still up in the air.
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