How much longer will the pandemic last?
This is the second article on the possible duration of the pandemic after the one published in the newspaper El Universal a year and a half ago and where we read: “Any prediction is based on mathematical or historical models and they are not crystal balls, but specialists in Epidemiological models agree that Covid-19 is here to stay. Based on the historical example of the misnamed “Spanish flu” of 1918, which took two years to stop, he commented that we would at least have a pandemic until the end of 2021. Two years later, this prediction fell short and the evolution of the coronavirus continues to surprise experts. Epidemiologists warn that the decline in the number of cases could indicate a plateau before another problematic variant emerges, so we cannot declare that we are done with the pandemic. In some places, such as much of Africa, vaccination rates lag far behind the rest of the world, making it difficult to achieve robust immunity to the virus in the global population.
Although it is true that in several regions of the world the pandemic has decreased considerably, after the heavy blow of the Omicron variant, there is news of a high number of infections in China with millions of inhabitants in confinement and an increase in cases in the Union. European and several American cities. The World Health Organization (WHO) has pointed out that the Omicron will not be the last variant of concern and that it will not end anywhere until it ends everywhere. Leaders should use this ongoing lull to prepare for future outbreaks, which could be as deadly as Delta or as transmissible as Omicron. Others have pointed out that even these pandemic waves could evolve from animals.
For doctors, it is amazing how quickly the virus evolves and what it does to the human body. Millions of people are dealing with symptoms that persist for weeks or several months after being diagnosed with this infection.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, doctors have noticed that the coronavirus was not only a respiratory virus, but that some hospitalized patients also had heart damage, blood clots, neurological complications, kidney and liver defects.
One of the scientific reasons is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus acquired genetic mutations much faster than expected. It is surprising to see that these variants make quite significant jumps in transmissibility, ability to adapt and spread easily, a feature that is incredibly surprising even for the most experienced virologists. These mutations make the pandemic much less predictable.
One likely scenario is that once a certain amount of immunity (natural or acquired) has built up we will have a pretty broad protection to the population, but we don’t know how long it will take to get to that point.
Each change in the virus will require a set of strategies to combat it, but the ideal approach will depend on who gets sick and how severely. The time will come when COVID is not a major emergency, and we will return to a life where the coronavirus does not represent a major risk of daily life like the flu and becomes a persistent but less lethal presence.
These projections about how Covid-19 will behave are speculative, but the end will involve a combination of everything that controlled past pandemics: continuous “cordon sanitaire” measures, novel antiviral drugs among other therapies, and finally vaccines that are adapted to the virus changes.
We already have more than two years of history and it is still difficult to predict what will happen. It seems that we will have to live with the virus and deal with epidemic seasons of increased circulation of SARS-CoV-2 that, at more critical moments, could force governments and the population to adopt collective preventive measures to limit the transmission of the virus. This undoubtedly capricious virus has taught us that we have to expect the unexpected from it.
@santiagobacci
Originally published at https://www.elnacional.com on March 18, 2022.
