When will the corona pandemic finally end? A British research team has now dared to make a forecast. It turns out gloomy.
London – The coronavirus has been rampant worldwide for almost three years, on March 11, 2020 Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, declared Corona a pandemic. When it comes to the end of the corona loop these days and weeks, virologists keep talking about the virus becoming endemic.
In other words: in the case of an endemic, unlike a pandemic, a disease occurs only locally and not worldwide. But when is this point finally reached?
Will the corona pandemic not end for five years?
As researchers from Great Britain suspect, the coronavirus will threaten the health system for at least five years. A grim forecast. The group of professionals is known as “SPI-MO” and advises the UK Government. “SPI-MO” stands for “Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modeling, Operational sub-group”.
The statement in which “SPI-MO” also makes this forecast comes from November 24th, 2021. In it, the group makes 33 points about Covid-19. One of them reads: “Sars-CoV-2 will continue to pose a threat to the health system and will require active management for at least five years, with vaccination and surveillance central.” Said statement was posted on the UK government website .
When will the corona pandemic end? RKI boss with a clear announcement
“How long the adjustment for Sars-CoV-2 will take is difficult to predict,” Lothar Wieler, President of the German Robert Koch Institute (RKI), does not want to specify a specific point in time. There are already four different corona cold viruses, he told dpa. And: “They too passed from animals to humans at some point.” The transition to an endemic virus in the case of the said viruses was probably already “decades or centuries” ago.
Wieler also warns about the corona vaccination: “If the majority of citizens get vaccinated, we will have the endemic status with less severe disease progression faster.” However, newly emerging corona variants, such as the most recent Omikron, could have a strong influence on the course. To counteract this, measures and a high vaccination rate are needed.
WHO chief: Moral failure of rich countries in corona pandemic
WHO chief Ghebreyesus accuses rich countries of moral failure. Vaccination in poorer countries is slow. “Nobody is safe until everyone is safe,” Ghebreyesus emphasized. The rich countries would hoard the vaccination doses, while in other countries there are hardly any available.
“Ensuring equality in vaccine distribution is not an act of charity, it is in the best interests of every country,” said the WHO chief. Because: If the virus can circulate unhindered in certain countries, dangerous new variants can emerge – such as the rapidly spreading Corona variant Omikron.
From this point of view, the prognosis of “SPI-MO” is – at least in part – invalid again. Because: The authors themselves emphasize that the statement was written before Omikron appeared. In the meantime, the variant has long been classified as “worrying”. (nc)
