Ben Krishna is a postdoctoral research fellow at University of Cambridge, specializing in virology and immunology. He is currently focusing on COVID-19 immunology, and in particular Long COVID’s lingering effects. He wrote a piece in The Conversation Health 24 picked up on December 30, 2021. In it, he posed the question are we moving from pandemic to endemic with COVID-19 festering on?
Epidemic, Pandemic, and Endemic Phases of Disease
A disease becomes an epidemic when it is widespread at a particular time in a particular region. However, medical scientists upgrade it to a pandemic if it spreads to more than one continent. All pandemics we know of became endemics, after they slowed to a baseline level at which humans could tolerate them.
Ben Krishna believes Omicron may not be the final variant, but it may be the final variant of concern. That’s because a virus cannot continue to improve indefinitely, whereas our immunity does. He suspects we may have entered a phase of gradually moving from pandemic to endemic, as virus performance peaks.
We May Be Moving from Pandemic to Endemic Already
Ben Krishna postulates the following status going forward, although this is still own his personal opinion:
1… The COVID-19 virus mutates to a point where it maxes its potential. Meanwhile our natural, and vaccinated immunity to serious illness continues to improve.
2… However, subsequent mutations cause it to drift away from that ‘herd immunity’ status, allowing new infections. The influenza virus has been at that endemic stage for a while.
3… But its ‘antigenetic drift is not sufficiently radical to change influenza status from endemic. Some people fall ill, some people die but for the rest of us life goes on.
Ben Krishna concludes ‘If we are lucky … SARS-CoV-2 will probably become an endemic virus that slowly mutates over time’. However, the course of this pandemic is hard to predict. Only time will tell us Omicron is indeed the final COVID-19 variant of concern.
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Preview Image: Progression of Disease
