Hyderabad: In the coming weeks, Telangana will complete the year and a half with the whole country. Covid-19 pandemic. Many lost their loved ones, while those who managed to defeat SARS-CoV-2 paid the price with long-term illnesses. By now, it is safe to assume that almost everyone is upset and thinking when and how this pandemic will come to an end.
How will the Covid-19 pandemic playing out in the coming months? Will the pandemic go away on its own or can vaccines put an end to it? Will it become endemic and an annual relationship? All of the above questions occur more frequently in the minds of people, even though experts worldwide are setting a timeline for the pandemic. The pandemic is not like an on / off switch that can be turned on or off at any time.
And yet it can be safely said that at some point in the coming months Covid-19 pandemic will end! Take the example of the deadly Spanish flu of 1918, which infected 500 million and claimed lives between 20 and 50 million. In 2009 the swine flu outbreak took place, but in a further one to two years, the swine flu became a seasonal flu because people had already developed an immunity against it.
In the well-known health-oriented news website STAT, senior author on infectious diseases, Helen Branswell says “Experience from the last four pandemics indicates that viruses change from emerging diseases from pandemic pathogens to endemic sources of disease within a year and a half. But all those earlier pandemics were flu pandemics. Another pathogen can mean that we will see a different pattern ”. If such a pattern holds, you can expect the SARS-CoV-2 to also become a seasonal ailment that causes cold during the winter season, in which conditions are favorable for its transmission.
Former virologist Kirsty Short of the University of Queensland said in an interview with ABC News that the pandemic could end in a fizzle and instead of a bang. ‘Even with the best therapies and vaccines in the world, this virus will be with us almost forever, even after the pandemic phase is over. It is incredibly difficult to eliminate a virus from the human population. “We have only done this with one human pathogen, and that is smallpox,” said Dr. Short said.
So how will an endemic coronavirus looks like in the coming months? Endemic SARS-CoV-2 will have a seasonal pattern, spreading during the winter months when children are at school and when we spend more time indoors in close proximity to each other. ‘If this thing becomes seasonal and you have countries where the vaccination rate is low and the immune background is low, the seasons can be a little stronger in the beginning. In countries where vaccination rates are high, it can be very low, ”said STAT magazine Florian Krammer, a vaccinator at the Icahn School of Medicine on Mount Sinai in New York.
How will a pandemic end?
• People were exposed to four major flu pandemics – Spanish flu (H1N1), 1957 H2N2, 1968 H3N2 and swine flu (H1N1) in 1918
• Viruses simply do not disappear and continue to exist in other forms
• Virus that caused Spanish flu was seen in the modern avatar in the form of H1N1
• Viruses become endemic and seasonal over a period of time
• While previous pandemics were due to flu virus, Covid is due to coronavirus
• Incubation period of coronavirus is taller and people stay sick longer
• Unlike flu-based pandemics, Covid patients stay contagious longer
• Flu pandemics have shown sudden endings, but it remains to be seen coronavirus
Also read
Covid will be like endemic flu due to variants: Canadian expert
Source: Telangana Today