The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, assured in September that the world “has never been so near the end of the pandemic of covid”. And Christian Drosten, a German reference virologist, affirmed on Monday that the virus is already has become endemic and that, in his opinion, “it’s over the pandemic”. However, it is not an opinion shared in Spain, where epidemiologists consider that it is dangerous to send this message in the middle of the fourth dose campaign, because, in his opinion, it can discourage the vulnerable population from getting vaccinated, and cause the public to relax (even more).
Beyond the terminology, five experts consulted by EL PERIÓDICO explain that the covid tends to behave in countries with a wide vaccination coveragelike the Europeans, so endemic and that the possibility of “new waves of great magnitude is very remote”, as predicted Admiral Benedicthead of infectious diseases at Vall d’Hebron.
Share this opinion Jose Maria Molero, from the infectious disease group of the Semfyc Family Physicians Society, who warns that, on a global scale, “the pandemic has not ended” but in Western countries the virus “tends to be endemic”. That is to say: it is transmitted routinely as the flu or the organism that causes bronchiolitis (RSV), but without generating large peaks of incidence or mortality.
Stabilization
In fact, the incidence in people older than 60 years is stabilizedwith 160 cases per 100,000 inhabitants on a national scale and 161 in Catalonia, where at the moment the virus that more circulates is the flu. The covid is in fourth place, behind bronchiolitis and rhinovirus. And “the severity of the flu in vulnerable people can be even higher than the covid itself,” according to Almirante warns.
In any case, the coronavirus and the flu They still don’t behave the same. The first can cause spikes at any time and the flu is seasonal, it strikes especially in winter and therefore it is much more predictable than the covid. Also, the big difference between the two is the vaccination. Only vulnerable people (and in the future children) are vaccinated for the flu, while 90% of the Spanish population has the first two doses against covid. “The flu is not serious in people who are not at risk, whereas if the Spanish population were not vaccinated against covid, they would be very concerned about what could happen,” admits the ISGlobal specialist in infections Quique Bassatwho also considers it rash to “change the terminology” from pandemic to endemic.
The dangerous situation in China
Proof of the importance of vaccination is what is happening in China, where a giant wave is taking place because the population, which has not been too exposed to the virus, is either not vaccinated or has been immunized with ineffective antigens. The situation in the Asian country demonstrates, in the opinion of the researcher Salvador Macipthat “the virus behaves as pandemic as before, it is infectious and aggressive; the vaccines control it but it is far from following seasonal patterns like the flu, so this is not the time to talk about the end of the pandemic, but rather to remember that you have to get vaccinated.”
In your opinion, there are “months”, if not “years” for the pandemic to end. Although it could happen that, in the event that the covid only seriously affects some areas of the planet and the rest is controlled, the WHO limits the emergency situation to that area.
new variants
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The problem with the virus running rampant in a country with as many millions of inhabitants as China is that more infectious variants. But both Almirante and Molero consider that it is “unlikely” that future sublineages “will produce large waves in populations such as Spain, with high levels of acquired immunity, due to previous infections or high vaccination rates.” Omicron and its variants, for example, have been more transmissible but not more serious.
The epidemiologist is less optimistic Joan Cayla, who emphasizes that the covid continues to be a “hard-to-control infection“and that it is called a “pandemic or endemic” will generate “very relevant health problems”, since for now “no country has managed to control it”. given that both in 2020, as well as in 2021 and in the first quarter of 2022 it has been the one that has caused the most deaths, ahead of cancer or cardiovascular diseases, something that has not happened for decades.