Is COVID-19 Endemic Yet? Infectious Disease Experts Aren’t So Sure
. “If you look at the history of infectious diseases, we’ve only eradicated one infectious disease in man, and that's smallpox. That’s not going to happen with this virus,” he said. “But hopefully it will be at such a low level that it doesn’t disrupt our normal social, economic, and other interactions. That’s what most people feel when they talk about ... endemicity, where it is integrated into the broad range of infectious diseases that we experience.
“We’re clearly moving in that direction,” Dr. Schaffner says. “The CDC and White House [do] not seem ready to declare that we’re in an endemic state. Saying, ‘the pandemic is over’ will likely be misinterpreted by people as saying, ‘We don’t have to worry about COVID anymore’ and that’s not the case.”
Predictions for when COVID will become endemic get a little tricky because there is always the risk of new variants slowing or even reversing the process, Dr. Russo says. “It could go in either direction going forward,” he says. “We could continue to do well—if a new variant doesn’t arise and if people keep up with their vaccinations. Or we could go in the other direction if a new problematic variant arises that evades our immunity. This is a dynamic situation.
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