Kluge estimates that by March omikron will have infected 60 percent of Europeans. And that’s good news, because once the current omikron-dominated wave in Europe subsides, a months-long period of widespread immunity and therefore few new infections may follow. According to the WHO director, this shelter is due to vaccination, the fact that many people have had the disease and a lower sensitivity to the virus as the weather warms. As it gets colder towards the end of the year, Covid-19 will return, but not as a pandemic, Kluge believes. “It is likely that the region is moving towards some sort of pandemic endgame.”
Kluge bases the latter on the relatively mild nature of the omikron variant, which has been shown to generally make people less ill than the delta variant. As a result, Covid-19 is gradually turning from a pandemic into a more manageable endemic disease such as seasonal flu. Kluge does, however, have a blow to his arm. “This virus has surprised us more than once, so we have to be very careful.”
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