- Covid-19 has been described as a dress rehearsal for our ability to solve the bigger problem of the climate crisis.
- There is a high uncertainty about how long a person remains immune to Sars-CoV-2 following natural infection or vaccination
- Some scientists think the UK is entering its final pandemic wave
The virus won’t disappear – it will just become endemic. But it could still put pressure on health systems in years to come, reports The Guardian.
Main agenda of Cop26
Cop26 gets under way in Glasgow this weekend, one collective action problem is taking centre stage against the backdrop of another. Covid-19 has been described as a dress rehearsal for our ability to solve the bigger problem of the climate crisis, so it seems important to point out that the pandemic isn’t over. Instead, joined-up thinking has become more important than ever for solving the problem of Covid-19.
Endemic Vs Pandemic
The endgame has been obvious for a while: rather than getting rid of Covid-19 entirely, countries will get used to it. The technical word for a disease that we’re obliged to host indefinitely is “endemic”.
It means that the disease-causing agent – the Sars-CoV-2 virus in this case – is always circulating in the population, causing periodic but more-or-less predictable disease outbreaks. No country has entered the calmer waters of endemicity yet; we’re all still on the white-knuckle ride of the pandemic phase.
The pandemic phase
In the pandemic phase, outbreaks are unpredictable and bad. There are simply too many people who remain susceptible to the virus, either because they’re unvaccinated or because they haven’t yet encountered the now-dominant, Delta variant, which transmits even among the fully vaccinated. The virus will find most of them eventually – even if it does not cause them all to become seriously ill.
The transition to endemicity will happen at different times in different countries and regions. It’s not unreasonable to think that the UK, with its high case numbers and vaccination rates, might be among those closest to the tipping point – which is why other countries are watching it closely.
Different variants
There is a high uncertainty about how long a person remains immune to Sars-CoV-2 following natural infection or vaccination, and about the virus’s capacity to generate variants that aren’t mild.
Delta, which is around three times as transmissible as the original Wuhan variant of Sars-CoV-2, has yet to reach many countries, but since May it has been dominant in the UK, where it has spread like wildfire since “freedom day” on 19 July.
Though new variants continue to emerge – such as AY.4.2, which recently started spreading in the UK – these have only been slightly more transmissible than Delta, at most, and the disease is not dramatically more severe now than it was in early 2020.
But as immunity grows in the population, so does the selective pressure for the virus to mutate and escape that immunity. Volcanologists are working hard to prepare for this risk.
The final pandemic wave
Some scientists think the UK is entering its final pandemic wave, from which it will exit into the endemic phase next spring.
Others think the pandemic has several more waves left in it, even in the UK. The waves may be smaller than in the past, especially since vaccines have broken the link between infection and hospitalisation to a large degree.
Future of COVID
The future of Covid-19 could be as mild as a common cold, but it could be worse. The response to this future disease may need to be more onerous than the response to flu, which involves only an annual vaccination campaign.
“I don’t think we can rule out a situation where Covid, though endemic, puts overwhelming pressure on health systems in some years,” Kucharski told me.
Did you subscribe to our daily Newsletter?
It’s Free! Click here to Subscribe
Source: The Guardian
