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The WHO says early calls for treating coronavirus as endemic are too early, as cases in some parts of the world remain high.
March 11, 2020, World Health Organization declare COVID-19 pandemic – a new disease that has spread around the world, affecting many people.
The term pandemic comes from the Greek word “pan” which means “everything” and “demos” which means “person”.
In contrast, endemism – which means “inside or inside” – is the constant presence of a disease in a region, and its spread is more predictable.
Many experts hope that COVID-19 will not be eradicated, and that the disease will become endemic and remain with us in a milder form.
Although the conditions for reclassification as endemic to COVID-19 are not specified, many countries, especially in Europe, have begun to remove restrictions on their path to life with the disease.
Last week, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called on European officials to treat COVID-19 as endemic as a result of a drop in the death rate.
Classification as COVID-19 would mean that fewer resources would be allocated to the fight against the disease and fewer people would be tested, which would probably not be considered a serious public health emergency.
But the World Health Organization (WHO) says it is too early to treat coronavirus as endemic, as cases remain high in some parts of the world.
Comparing endemic diseases
Endemic diseases are all around us, from the common cold to more serious diseases such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.
Epidemiologists, scientists who study the spread of disease, consider it an endemic disease when its levels are consistent and predictable. Endemic diseases are constantly present in a population of a particular region.
Below we compare the number of cases and deaths per year due to endemic diseases.
For COVID-19 to be endemic, several factors should be considered, including how the disease continues to evolve, as well as the type of immunity that people gain through infections and vaccines.
Dominant variant of omicron
Like all viruses, the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus has been mutating since its inception in late 2019.
Mutations in the virus’s spinal protein (changes in the genetic code) may affect its ability to infect cells.
Omicron, the most transmissible variant first detected in November 2021, is now detected in 165 countries and territories around the world.
COVID-19 has pushed for the highest number of cases in the world, with at least 100 countries reporting the highest number of confirmed cases per day since the beginning of 2022. There is also an unknown number of people who may be infected with Omicron without being tested.
Different levels of immunity worldwide
Moe predicts More than half of the European population could catch Omicron by March, which, along with high vaccination rates, should lead to a higher level of immunity.
Flock immunity occurs when a large proportion of a community becomes immune to a disease through infection or vaccination, stopping the spread of the disease.
As the variants become more infectious, the herd’s immune threshold increases. Therefore, the percentage of the threshold has been gradual increasing in the original voltage from about 60-70 per cent to Delta with 85 per cent and with Omicron over 90 per cent.
Meanwhile, many poorer countries waiting for vaccines may be far from seeing the end of the pandemic.
Only 5 percent of people in low-income countries are fully vaccinated by the latest data Our World in Data.
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