As the Omicron variant comes to the fore in Europe and the United States, scientists are revising their predictions for the Covid-19 pandemic next year. Just a few weeks ago, experts predicted that countries would begin to emerge from the pandemic in 2022, following the resurgence caused by the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants. The first countries to emerge from the pandemic would be countries that would combine high levels of population exposure to the virus through infection and high levels of population protection through vaccination.
In these areas, Covid was expected to develop into an endemic disease, possibly with less severe periodic or seasonal outbreaks. The vaccines, which were available for much of 2021 in rich countries, would reach most of the world’s population next year.
But the rapid spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant, which was detected in late November, and its potentially greater ability to re-infect humans than its predecessors, undermine this hope of a pandemic.
Already, many countries are returning to taking measures that were used in previous phases of the pandemic: travel restrictions, wearing a mask, avoiding large gatherings on holidays.
Although we are not back to square one, most people will need to be vaccinated or exposed to Covid to overcome the pandemic, infectious disease experts told Reuters.
“People have recovered from the pandemic and God knows how far I have recovered, but if we fail to force our leaders to act urgently, I really anticipate that 2022 will be a repeat of 2021,” she said. Angela Rasmussen, virologist of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization of the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
Even as Covid develops into a more endemic disease, new variants will emerge and seasonal relapses will occur in the coming years.
“There will always be a number of Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “A lot of people have not realized this.”
The hope is that the virus will weaken to the point that it will not disrupt life. But living with Covid-19 does not mean that the virus is no longer a threat.
Instead, people should be prepared to adapt when the next variant appears, says Dr. Tom Frieden, head of Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “It may need to be determined at certain times that it is safer to do certain things than at other times.”
From pandemic to endemic Covid
Some scientists are not entirely ready to give up hope that some parts of the world will emerge from the pandemic next year. More than 270 million people have been infected with Covid, according to the World Health Organization, and about 57% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, which provides potential protection that did not exist two years ago.
“Even if this immunity is not so high against Omicron, it does not mean that it is useless. “And this immunity is more effective against the serious disease than against the transmission,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins.
So far, most of the studies investigating the effectiveness of Omicron vaccines have focused on neutralizing antibodies, which are also easier to measure. The results of blood tests from fully vaccinated people show that Omicron has learned to get rid of the neutralizing antibodies produced by the vaccines. But it is possible that a booster dose restores protection.
At the level of cellular immunity, it appears that T lymphocytes remain able to recognize the Homicron variant. Many experts believe that this second line of defense will prevent hospitalization and death.
“There are still many people” who are threatened because they are still unvaccinated, says Dr. Celine Gounder, a New York University infectious disease specialist. This is one of the reasons why he believes it will be some time before we move from pandemic to endemic Covid-19.
In the meantime, living with COVID in 2022 will probably mean assessing local risks and individual protection through vaccination, mask use and distance keeping.
“When I go shopping in the afternoon, it helps to know the level of Covid in my community,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, president of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
“There will not be a pandemic stage. There will be different stages for different people and for different areas. And it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. “
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