Is coronavirus disappearing?
There are reasons to believe this. New booster shots are being produced to protect us from the variants that are now circulating. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has removed the quarantine and distancing recommendations. More and more people take off their masks and return to their pre-pandemic activities.
But scientists say no. They predict that this crisis, which has lasted longer than the 1918 influenza pandemic, will continue into the future.
Why has this gone on for so long? One reason is that it has managed to bypass vaccination and immunity caused by infection. Recent research indicates that the latest Omicron version—BA.4.6, which caused 8% of infections in the United States last week—is becoming effective and even more effective at evading the immune system than the effective BA.5. Looks efficient.
Scientists fear that the evolution of the virus will lead to more frightening forms.
How long will this last?
White House coordinator for COVID-19, Dr Ashish Jha said that we will probably have COVID-19 for the rest of our lives.
Experts predict that it will one day become endemic, which means it will appear periodically in certain regions according to established patterns. But he doubts it will take a long time.
Still, living with COVID-19 is “not a scary or bad concept” as people learn to fight it better, Jha said in a recent Q&A with Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Obviously, if we take our foot off the accelerator — if we stop updating our vaccines, stop developing new treatments — we could be in for a setback.”
Experts say that the coronavirus may be causing serious disorders in some people. The COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub made some projections for the period between August 2022 and May 2023, assuming there will be new boosters to provide further protection and a booster vaccination campaign in the fall and winter. In the most pessimistic scenario – a new variant and delayed reinforcement – ​​they estimated 1.3 million hospitalizations and 181,000 deaths over that period. In the most optimistic hypothesis – without a new variant and with anticipated reinforcement – there would be more than half hospitalizations and 110,000 deaths.
Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said that “unless we do what we need to do,” such as producing the next generation of vaccines and distributing them equitably, there are likely to be repetitive spikes. .
Topol said the virus “there are many ways to avoid our current strategies, it will keep finding people, finding them again and sustaining itself.”
