Is the COVID-19 pandemic really over? According to a Bay Area-based expert, the public health crisis has not just ended; all the signs also point to COVID-19 becoming endemic in the U.S. this year.
UCSF infectious diseases expert Dr. Peter Chin-Hong confidently said that Americans could soon breathe a maskless sigh of relief when the novel coronavirus becomes more of a thing of the past than a threatening disease of the present.
“I think this is a critical year because this is the year that COVID will become endemic,” Chin-Hong told ABC 7 Monday.
Thanks to the level of immunity within American society and the tools — treatment and vaccines — available against COVID-19, the viral disease is becoming predictable and easy to counter, he noted.
Of course, there would still be casualties. But Chin-Hong believes that the COVID jabs and boosters would only be needed by the most vulnerable individuals, especially the elderly, when the disease becomes endemic.
“We as a society have to be prepared for as much as 100,000 to 250,000 people a year dying of those vulnerable groups. But, in general, for your average person, it will probably fizzle out,” Ching-Hong said.
On May 5, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that COVID-19 could no longer be considered a public health emergency after noticing a steady decline in cases in recent months.
However, the WHO chief also admitted in the same breath that the novel coronavirus would remain a global threat as the virus continues to mutate and spread worldwide.
On Monday, Tedros reiterated during a meeting in Geneva that “the end of COVID-19 as a global health emergency is not the end of COVID-19 as a global health threat.” He warned that in the face of a possible resurgence, countries should strengthen their response capacities against the disease and prepare for future threats and pandemics.
Chin-Hong said many factors, including climate change and globalization, could make other…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply