When Will Covid-19 Become Endemic & Should It Be Considered Harmless? Know Experts' Opinion

A Nature survey shows that many scientists expect the virus that causes Covid-19 to become endemic, but it could pose less danger over time

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New Delhi: The Omicron-led variant has caused the third wave in India and similarly affecting other parts of the world. Discovered in November, the new mutant of coronavirus called B.1.1.529 contains a higher risk of reinfection than other variants and rapidly spread across the globe leading to hospitalisations.

Some studies pointed out that existing vaccines were not proving to be effective against the strain first detected in South Africa. Laboratory studies have indicated that inactivated-virus vaccines, which make up almost half of the 10 billion doses distributed worldwide, elicit few antibodies against the variant, according to the scientific journal Nature.

One of the most important questions lingering in the minds of people is regarding the end of the pandemic. According to the researchers, Omicron is certainly not the last variant of coronavirus to appear.

A Nature survey shows that many scientists expect the virus that causes Covid-19 to become endemic, but it could pose less danger over time.

In its survey, Nature reached out to more than 100 immunologists, infectious-disease researchers, and virologists working on the coronavirus whether it could be eradicated. Almost 90 percent of the respondents think that the coronavirus will become endemic — meaning that it will continue to circulate in pockets of the global population for years to come.

“I think it’s the expectation that the general behaviour is somehow towards the situation where we have so much immunity in the population that we would no longer see very deadly epidemics,” Sebastian Funk, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told Nature.

However, top virologist Aris Katzourakis warned against treating the coronavirus disease as harmless “just because it will become endemic”.

In an article published in Nature, Katzourakis said that endemic has become one of the most misused of the pandemic.

On the other hand, Mark Woolhouse, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK has been quoted in the journal saying that Covid-19 will become endemic only when most adults are protected against severe infection because they have been exposed to the virus as children, and have developed immunity.

He added that this will take decades, and it means many older people today (who were not exposed as children) will remain vulnerable and might need continued vaccinations.

The WHO said the pandemic will not end as the omicron variant subsidies in some countries, warning the high levels of infection around the world will likely lead to new variants as the virus mutates.