At Tatan Suflana / Associated Press
Vaccination campaigns have promised to curb COVID-19, but governments and businesses are increasingly accepting epidemiological warnings: the disease will spread for years or even decades, with society co-existing with COVID-19. As much as it goes with other local diseases like flu, measles and HIV.
Epidemiologists say that the coronavirus spreads spontaneously, new strains emerge and vaccines are poorly used in large parts of the world, meaning that the Covid-19 epidemic is turning into a local disease, indicating a permanent change in individual and social behavior. , Say pathologists. .
“As we go through the five stages of grief, we must come to the stage of acceptance that our lives cannot be the same,” said Thomas Frieden, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I don’t think the fact that these are long-term changes, the world has really assimilated.”
Local Covid-1 necessity does not necessarily mean persistent coronavirus restrictions, infectious disease experts say, largely because vaccines are so effective in preventing serious disease and reducing hospital admissions and mortality. One-third of its population in Israel has been hospitalized after being vaccinated. Deaths are expected there next week.
But some organizations are planning for the long term in which prevention methods such as masking, good ventilation and testing continue in some form. Meanwhile, a new and potentially attractive Covid-19 industry is rapidly emerging, as businesses invest in goods and services such as air-quality monitoring, filters, diagnostic kits and new treatments.
The number of gene-detecting PCR tests produced globally is expected to increase this year, with manufacturers such as New Jersey’s Quest Diagnostics predicting that millions of people will need a swab before they participate in concerts, basketball games or family activities.
“We believe it will last for years, or be as eternal as the flu,” said South Korea’s S.D. Biosensor, Inc. “We are increasing the production of home diagnostic kits,” said Jivon Lim, a spokesman for Leading drug manufacturers – Switzerland’s Novartis International AG and Ally Lilly & Co. have invested in potential Covid-19 therapies. More than 300 such products are currently in development.
Airlines like Lufthansa are restructuring to focus on short-haul flights within Europe, and away from Pacific countries, which have said they will keep borders closed at least this year. Some airports are planning new vaccine passport systems to allow inoculated passengers to travel. The restaurant invests in more withdrawal and delivery offer fur. Europe’s meat-packing plants are buying robotic weapons from Canada to reduce the number of workers on assembly lines to prevent the risk of an outbreak.
Diseases are considered when they are constantly present but manageable like the flu. Epidemiologists say the extent of the spread varies by disease and location. Rabies, malaria, HIV and Zika are all three infectious diseases, but their prevalence and human numbers vary globally.
“After nations failed to control coronavirus and transmission globally, it was clear to most virologists that the virus would be localized,” said John Mascola, director of the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center. Director. “While the virus spreads very easily in humans and populations [lacks immunity], It has a chance to spread wherever it spreads. It’s like a dam in a dam. ”
Immunologists now hope that vaccines will stop transmission, a result that will drastically reduce the spread of the virus. People who are vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine are less likely to get the disease, according to a study from Oxford University published last week.
Still, there are many pockets of the human population that will be out of reach of the vaccine for the foreseeable future, giving the virus plenty of room to continue circulating.
No vaccine is currently authorized for young children, and supply issues will leave most of the developing world without a pill by the end of next year. Europe, meanwhile, has seen a sharp rise in vaccine denial rates: less than half of French people polled in the recent Yugoslav polls were willing to take a shot.
As scientists develop new treatments, Covid-19 will further become the “infection we can live with,” said Rachel Bender Ignacio, an infectious disease specialist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. As such, he said, it would be important to develop therapies for persistently debilitating symptoms that many patients struggle with for months after becoming ill, such as memory fog, loss of smell and digestive and heart problems.
Australia Some countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, have brought their average daily case counts into single digits, but have never experienced the enormous outbreak seen by the US and Europe, and both island nations have seen the virus cut before their strict travel bans. .
“I don’t think we should start to eliminate or eradicate this virus as a barrier to success,” said Mike Rhea, executive director of the World Health Organization’s emergency program. “We have to get to the point where we are in control of the virus, not the virus.”
Only one human virus has been completely eradicated in modern history: smallpox. While the disease was only transmitted to humans, the novel coronavirus spreads to small mammals such as mink, then, although less effective, turns into humans, turning the world’s fur farms into potential reservoirs of the virus.
Sean Whelan, a virologist at the University of Washington in St. Louis, said some of the 19-crore cases of covid have given the virus ample opportunity to improve its ability to infect other mammals. He said the changes present in South African and UK variables had given the pathogen the ability to infect rats.
Diseases that do not spread to people who do not show symptoms – most are cases of coronavirus, especially difficult to eradicate. The second such disease, polio, which was eradicated from the U.S. in the 1970s, was eradicated from Europe only in 2002 after decades of multi-million dollar global efforts, and does not exist in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Respiratory viruses such as novel coronaviruses are more likely to be localized because they can be transmitted through mild acts, such as breathing and talking, and can be particularly good at infecting cells. It includes OC43, a coronavirus that researchers now think of as the Russian flu of the 1890s, an epidemic that killed one million people. That virus – which is still present in the population – is responsible for many common colds, although it has become less viral as people have developed immunity.
Mutations in the novel coronavirus variants appear to have made it better to infect human cells or to avoid certain antibodies, raising concerns that the existing vaccine may be less effective. Scientists say it will be important to monitor new types for long-term vaccination programs. Understanding their characteristics will help determine if the shots need to be updated periodically, as they are for the flu.
Vaccinations will be just as important when the epidemic subsides and Covid-19 becomes localized.
“People think that when a virus becomes an epidemic, it weakens and doesn’t get that serious,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Sciences and Security. This misconception arises from the fact that viruses usually develop to increase the number of people infected before killing them.
But most people survive Covid-1, so “there is no pressure to strain further for this virus because it already spreads and finds new hosts and new opportunities to replicate before its hosts get sick.” “He’s doing exactly that.”
Write Daniela Hernandez to daniella.nardezઝwsj.com and Drew Henshaw to [email protected]
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