New Delhi: As the Omicron-led variant rages across the world, it has moved the pandemic into a new phase and could bring it to an end in Europe, the WHO Europe director said on Sunday.
"It's plausible that the region is moving towards a kind of pandemic endgame," Hans Kluge told AFP adding that Omicron could infect 60 percent of Europeans by March.
What are predictions on the Covid-19 endgame?
The WHO Europe director said coming days are likely to be better after the current surge of Omicron sweeping across Europe cools down, "there will be for quite some weeks and months a global immunity, either thanks to the vaccine or because people have immunity due to the infection, and also lowering seasonality".
"We anticipate that there will be a period of quiet before Covid-19 may come back towards the end of the year, but not necessarily the pandemic coming back," Kluge added. Echoing similar sentiments, US scientist Anthony Fauci also said on the News talk show "This Week" that with Covid-19 cases coming down "rather sharply" in parts of the United States, "things are looking good".
However, he cautioned against overconfidence saying that if the recent fall in case numbers in areas like the US's northeast continued, "I believe that you will start to see a turnaround throughout the entire country". The WHO regional office for Africa also informed cases of Covid had plummeted in that region and deaths were declining for the first time since the Omicron-dominated fourth wave of the virus reached its peak.
On the subject of the Covid-19 being endemic, Kluge said it was still too early to consider it endemic. "There is a lot of talk about endemic but endemic means ... that it is possible to predict what's going to happen. This virus has surprised (us) more than once so we have to be very careful," Kluge added.
With Omicron spreading so widely, other variants could still emerge, he warned.
Meanwhile, the European Commissioner for Internal Markets, Thierry Breton, whose brief includes vaccine production, said it will be possible to adapt existing vaccines to any new variants that may emerge. "We will be able to better resist, including to new variants", he told French television LCI.
"We will be ready to adapt the vaccines, especially the mRNA ones, if necessary to adapt them to more virulent variants".