We’ve gotten a better understanding of how to protect ourselves against COVID, new Omicron-specific boosters are being rolled out, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dropped COVID-19 quarantine and distancing recommendations, and many people have thrown off their masks and returned to pre-pandemic activities. Additionally, the number of new coronavirus cases fell everywhere in the world last week by about 12%, according to the World Health Organization's latest weekly review of the pandemic. This means COVID is coming to an end right? Not exactly. In fact, scientists believe the pandemic will linger far into the future.
“This is very encouraging, but there is no guarantee these trends will persist,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press briefing. “The most dangerous thing is to assume (that) they will,” he said. Even though the number of weekly reported deaths has plummeted more than 80% since February, one person still dies from COVID-19 every 44 seconds, according to Ghebreyesus.
Why has the pandemic lasted so long?
One reason the pandemic has lasted this long? It’s gotten better and better at getting around immunity from vaccination and past infection. According to scientists, emerging research suggests the latest Omicron variant is gaining ground in the U.S. BA.4.6, which was responsible for around 8% of new U.S. infections last week also appears to be even better at evading the immune system than the dominant BA.5.
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Based on this information, scientists believe that the virus will continue to evolve.
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How long will COVID be around?
In fact, White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha says COVID will likely be with us for the rest of our lives.
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According to experts, COVID-19 will most likely become endemic. This means it will occur regularly in certain areas. However, they don’t believe this will happen anytime soon.
The virus “just has too many ways to work around our current strategies, and it’ll just keep finding people, finding them again, and self-perpetuating,” Eric Topol, head of Scripps Research Translational Institute says.
The good news, however, is that we are getting better at fighting it as long as we don’t slip backward.
“Obviously if we take our foot off the gas — if we stop updating our vaccines, we stop getting new treatments — then we could slip backwards,” Jha adds.
How will COVID mutate?
Scientists don’t expect the virus to keep getting transmissible forever.
“I think there is a limit,” says Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “What we’re really dealing with, though, is there’s still a lot of people across the world who don’t have any prior immunity — either they haven’t been infected or they haven’t had access to vaccination.”
If the baseline level of immunity rises significantly, the rate of infections, and the emergence of more contagious variants, should slow down, according to Binnicker.
Scientists hope this level of immunity will continue, however, as immunity wanes, there is a chance that the virus could mutate in a way that causes more severe illness.
“There’s not any inherent reason, biologically, that the virus has to become milder over time,” said Dr. Wesley Long, a pathologist at Houston Methodist. The fact it may seem milder now “is likely just the combined effect of all of us having some immune history with the virus.”
What will be the next variant?
Since last year, Omicron has been around leaving behind a series of highly transmissible subvariants. This pattern could continue for at least the next few months, according to Binnicker. However, in the near future, we may see a new variant due to the recent wave of infections and re-infections, which “gives the virus more chances to spread and mutate and new variants to emerge,” Binnicker notes.
Can you influence the future of COVID?
While it may be discouraging to hear that COVID is here to stay, experts believe that the future of the virus can be impacted for the better if more people get vaccinated and boosted.
“We have a virus out there that’s still circulating, still killing hundreds of Americans every day,” Jha said in a press briefing Tuesday. But, he added: “We now have all of the capability to prevent, I believe, essentially all of those deaths. If people stay up to date on their vaccines, if people get treated if they have a breakthrough infection, we can make deaths from this virus vanishingly rare.”
Up to 100,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations and 9,000 deaths could be prevented if Americans get the updated booster at the same rate they typically get the annual flu shot this fall. About half of Americans are typically vaccinated against the flu each year, CDC director Rochelle Walensky says.
Vaccines are also a great way to boost your immunity.
Aside from getting vaccinated and boosted, the same safety precautions that we have been practicing since the start of the pandemic remain good options in high-risk situations. This includes wearing masks indoors when COVID rates are high, social distancing and regularly washing your hands.
