Two years after the official start of the pandemic, some countries are now trying to “live with Covid”, however scientists warn that potential new variants and unequal vaccination rates threaten any long-awaited return to normality.
When US global health researcher Christopher Murray wrote “Covid-19 will continue but the end of the pandemic is near”, in The Lancet medical journal in late January, he summed up the hopes of many national health authorities around the world.
In the weeks leading up to the two-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring a pandemic in March 2020, countries such as Britain and Denmark lifted all legal Covid restrictions. Many US states also relaxed mask and other rules.
A good news related to our Valley Kashmir comes today when Dr. Naveed Ahamd Shah tweeted “Since March 2020, No Covid-19 Positive Patient Admitted Today In CD Hospital Dalgate … Hopefully we are at the end of the pandemic”.
From pandemic to endemic?
Spain has been among the nations calling for approaching Covid as having transitioned to an “endemic” phase, meaning it has milder seasonal outbreaks that humanity can live with, such as the flu. However some scientists worry governments could use the somewhat vague term to justify lifting life-saving measures. University of Oxford evolutionary virologist Aris Katzourakis said “the word ‘endemic’ has become one of the most misused of the pandemic.”
“A disease can be endemic and both widespread and deadly,” he wrote in the journal Nature last week, pointing out that malaria killed more than 600,000 people in 2020, while 1.5 million died of tuberculosis. There are also other options than just pandemic or endemic. The British government’s scientific advisory body SAGE has laid out four potential scenarios for the years to come. Under the “reasonable best-case” scenario, there will be smaller regional or seasonal outbreaks, as the higher Covid numbers lead to fewer flu cases. Under the worst-case scenario, new unpredictable variants build into repeated damaging virus waves, requiring the return of harsh restrictions. The different outcomes hinge on two key uncertainties: the possible emergence of new variants, and the ability of vaccines to protect against the disease in the long term.
