What will the endemic phase of Covid actually look like? - TODAYshow
, Dr. Bernard Camins, medical director for infection prevention at the Mount Sinai Health System, told TODAY.
“It’s endemic when it doesn’t disrupt everyday life,” he said. Although there may be some years that are particularly severe with the flu and others that are milder, even severe flu years don’t disrupt health care, transportation, businesses or our other usual routines to the same degree that COVID-19 has, Camins explained.
“In a pandemic, what we usually see are waves of disease. And those waves of disease are what we exactly what we’ve been in and continue to experience,” Martinello said. “Whereas when a disease is endemic, we expect it to follow, for example, a seasonal pattern like we see with influenza or some of our cold viruses.”
That means we may have more surges later this year and, maybe, for the next several years. But those waves likely won’t be as disruptive as the delta and omicron surges have been due to the increasing overall level of immunity — both from vaccination and infection — in the population. “As we go forward with this, then that proportion of the population will be higher and higher,” Camins said. “And then that’s when we move to endemicity.
“My hospital is a little over 1500 beds, and in the worst flu seasons, we may see 100 people who are in our hospital with the flu,” Martinello said. “But just a few weeks ago we had 450 people in our hospital with COVID… That’s the difference: There may well be a wave per se, but the peak of the wave is very different .”
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