WHO says going from pandemic to endemic does not make COVID-19 less dangerous

The WHO emergency manager warned on Tuesday that the fact that COVID-19 ceases to be a pandemic and becomes endemic does not make it less dangerous.

“People oppose the pandemic with the endemic, but endemic malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people, HIV is endemic, violence is endemic in our cities”, said Michael Ryan in a remote colloquium organized by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

“Endemic by itself doesn’t mean it’s good, endemic just means it’s always there,” he said.

The arrival of the omicron variant, much more contagious than any other form of the COVID-19 virus known so far, but which seems to cause less severe symptoms in vaccinated people, has launched the debate on whether the pandemic, declared in early 2020, will be endemic.

A debate that implies that it will be less dangerous.

“We will not get rid of the virus this year,” warned the doctor. “We may never eradicate the virus. Viruses that cause pandemics are often part of the ecosystem,” he added.

“What we can end is a public health emergency of international interest,” he explained, saying that it was necessary “to achieve the lowest possible incidence rate with the maximum number of vaccines so that no one has to die.”

“That will be the end of the emergency and that will be the end of the pandemic,” said the doctor.

The person in charge of the organization also raised the possibility that in the future three or four injections will be considered as the normal number of doses to escape the most serious forms of COVID-19.

Meanwhile, the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also said that the coronavirus pandemic “is far from over” and has ruled out that the omicron variant, which spreads rapidly throughout the world, is benign.

“Ómicron is causing hospitalizations and deaths. And even the less serious cases overwhelm health centers,” he told reporters. (I)