‘Covid may become seasonal ailment’

Experts say it can turn into an endemic that causes cold during winter when conditions are favourable for its transmission

Hyderabad: In the coming weeks, Telangana along with the entire country will complete one-and-a-half years into the Covid-19 pandemic. Many have lost their near and dear ones while those who managed to beat SARS-CoV-2 are paying the price with long-term morbidities. By this time, it’s safe to assume that almost everybody is exasperated and thinking when and how this pandemic will come to an end.

How will the Covid-19 pandemic play itself out in the coming months? Will the pandemic fizzle out on its own or can vaccines put an end to it? Will it become endemic and a yearly affair? All the above questions come to the thoughts of people more often, even as experts worldwide struggle to put a timeline to the pandemic. The pandemic is not like a power switch that can be switched ON or OFF at any moment is their refrain.

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And yet, it could be safely said that someday or somehow, in the coming months, the Covid-19 pandemic will end! Take the example of the deadly 1918 Spanish flu, which infected 500 million and claimed lives of anywhere between 20 million and 50 million. In 2009, the swine flu outbreak took place but in another one to two-years, the swine flu became a seasonal flu, as people developed pre-existing immunity to it.

In noted health-oriented news website STAT, senior writer on Infectious Diseases, Helen Branswell says “Experience from the last four pandemics would suggest that viruses morph from pandemic pathogens to endemic sources of disease within a year and a half or two of emerging. But all of those earlier pandemics were influenza pandemics. A different pathogen could mean we’ll see a different pattern”. If such a pattern holds, then one can expect that the SARS-CoV-2 also becomes a seasonal ailment that causes cold during winter season, in which the conditions are favourable for its transmission.

Noted virologist Kirsty Short from the University of Queensland, in an interview with ABC news, said that the pandemic could end with a fizzle and instead of a bang. “Even with the best therapies and vaccines in the world, this virus is almost certainly going to be with us forever, even after the pandemic phase has passed. To eliminate a virus from the human population is incredibly difficult. We’ve only ever done it with one human pathogen, and that’s smallpox,” Dr Short said.

So how will an endemic coronavirus look like in the coming months? Endemic SARS-CoV-2 would have a seasonal pattern, spreading in the winter months when kids are in school and when we spend more time indoors in proximity to each other. “If this thing becomes seasonal and you have countries where the vaccination rate is low and the immunity background is low, those seasons in the beginning might be a little bit stronger. In countries where vaccination rates are high, they might be very low,” said Florian Krammer, a vaccinologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, was quoted by the STAT magazine.

How will a pandemic end?

• Humans faced four major influenza pandemics– 1918 Spanish flu (H1N1), 1957 H2N2, 1968 H3N2 and swine flu (H1N1)
• Viruses simply do not vanish and continue to exist in other forms
• Virus that caused Spanish flu was witnessed in modern avatar in the form of H1N1
• Over a period of time, viruses become endemic and seasonal
• While earlier pandemics were due to influenza virus, Covid is due to coronavirus
• Incubation period of coronavirus is longer and people remain sick for longer time
• Unlike influenza-based pandemics, Covid patients remain infectious for a longer time
• Influenza pandemics have shown abrupt endings but it is yet to be seen in coronavirus

Also Read

Covid will be like endemic flu due to variants: Canadian expert

 

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