Covid can already be considered endemic, says Rio Health Secretary

The municipal secretary of health of Rio de Janeiro, Daniel Soranz, said this Friday (11) that Covid-19 can already be considered an endemic disease. For him, without new variants of the coronavirus, the scenario will be “much more normal”.

“We can already consider the Covid-19 pandemic as an endemic disease, a disease that will be present over time,” said Soranz, in an interview with Agência Brasil and Rádio Nacional in Rio de Janeiro.

The secretary’s speech is similar to the position of the Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, who started to treat as a priority downgrading the status of Covid-19 from a pandemic (when there is a global health emergency) to endemic (stage of coexistence with the virus). , with a stable number of cases and deaths).

The withdrawal of a pandemic character restricts public and exceptional measures to combat the disease.

experts heard by sheet two weeks ago they disagreed with the assessment of the secretary and the minister. According to them, this does not mean that Covid-19 will not pass into the endemic phase, but we are just not there yet.

“What defines the end of an epidemic or pandemic is a series of factors together, not just a specific indicator of deaths or cases”, explains Maria Amélia Veras, epidemiologist at the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Santa Casa de São Paulo.

Some diseases, such as AIDS, after four decades still haven’t left the pandemic character, she recalls. “An epidemic remains a very big social problem, so it’s an emergency appeal,” she says.

Another factor that prevents the announcement of the end of the pandemic is the very novelty that Covid represents for the world, says Paulo Lotufo, an epidemiologist and professor at the USP School of Medicine.

“We can only talk about endemic when we know the historical trend of the disease well established, and we still don’t have that for Covid”, he explains.

Rio de Janeiro was the first capital to abolish the mandatory use of masks in any environment. The “vaccination passport” remains in force, but should fall if adherence to the booster dose reaches 70% of the population.

“The pandemic has now become an endemic disease. It remains for a very long time. If no new variant appears, as happened with the ômicron variant, we will have a scenario of much more normality in the coming days” , said Soranz, who is a pre-candidate for federal deputy and is about to join the PSD.

After a peak in the number of confirmed cases caused by the ômicron, the capital of Rio de Janeiro returned to low levels of contamination and hospitalizations. The secretary said that the positivity rate in the tests is at 1.4% and that the transmission rate is 0.31 (the number indicates how many people an infected patient can transmit the new coronavirus to; that is, an index of 0 ,31 means that every 100 people infected transmit the disease to another 31 people).

For him, the agglomerations seen during Carnival should not worsen the epidemiological scenario. The samba school parade on the Tiradentes holiday is maintained.

“Carnival was not a problem on the original date, even with the agglomerations. And we hope that Carnival in Sapucaí happens normally, that people can be happy again, be together and return a little to the carioca way of being”, he said.

“With this favorable epidemiological scenario, we are very confident that it can be done [o Carnaval]as long as cariocas continue to be vaccinated and take the booster dose”, he declared.