Dr. Fauci says it’s too early to say whether Omicron will end the pandemic
News Times Link: White House’s chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Monday that it is too early to say whether the omicron varient of the coronavirus will end the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Monday, in a virtual panel at the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda online meeting, Fauci was asked whether 2022 would be the year when Covid-19 would become endemic. The omicron option can speed up the process given the high transmittance.
“It is an open question as to whether or not omicron is going to be the live virus vaccination that everyone is hoping for, because you have such a great deal of variability with new variants emerging,” Fauci replied.
“I would hope that that’s the case. But that would only be the case if we don’t get another variant that eludes the immune response of the prior variant,” he said.
Fauci said the endemic nature of COVID-19 means that the virus “exists at a level that does not disrupt society.”
“And I think that’s what most people see when they talk about endemicity, where it is integrated into the broad range of infectious diseases that we experience. For example: the cold weather upper-respiratory infections, the para-influenzas, the respiratory syncytial viruses, the rhinoviruses,” he said. “You want to get it at a level that doesn’t disrupt society.”
“The answer is we don’t know,” Fauci said when asked when the coronavirus might become prevalent.
This winter, Omicron strains have spread across the United States, with cases still increasing in some states. Community transmission remains high nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to NBC News, there were an average of 701,054 new cases over the seven days as of Monday. Eight states recorded record cases on Monday: Alabama, Hawaii, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Fauci said he considers a pandemic to have phases, starting with the “truly pandemic” phase, in which “the whole world is really negatively impacted as we are right now.” That’s followed by deceleration, control and elimination.
Eradication would have been an ideal last step, he said, but smallpox is the only disease that humans have eradicated.
“That’s not going to happen with this virus,” Fauci said.
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