When will all this end? Renowned scientists are changing the prognosis for the course of the pandemic

Until recently, Cap. Murray hoped that the emergence of several effective vaccines could help countries gain public immunity or nearly quell the spread of the virus through a combination of vaccination and relapse. However, data from vaccine trials in South Africa last month showed that the rapidly spreading strain of coronavirus could not only weaken the effects of the vaccine, but also ignore the natural immunity that developed in people who had had it. previously, Reuters reported.

After seeing these data, Ch. Murray, director of the Seattle-based Institute for Health Indicators and Assessment, “couldn’t get to sleep.”

“When will all this end?” Asked the expert, referring to the pandemic. He is currently updating his prediction model to take into account the ability of virus strains to avoid natural immunity. Ch. Murray hopes to present his new predictions as soon as possible.

According to a Reuters interview with 18 experts who are closely monitoring the pandemic or trying to mitigate its effects, a new approach is emerging among scientists.

Most point to the breakthrough last year, when two were created about 95 percent. Effective COVID-19 vaccines initially sparked hope that the virus was largely manageable, just as measles was before.

However, they say recent weeks’ data on new varieties in South Africa and Brazil suppress this optimism. Now, scientists have no doubt that SARS-CoV-2 will not only remain with us as an endemic virus and spread to society, but that it will also likely carry a large burden of morbidity and mortality in the years to come.

For this reason, scientists say, people will have to consider that during COVID-19 outbreaks special measures will continue to be required, such as constant wearing of masks and avoiding crowded places. This will be especially true for people at high risk.

Even after vaccination, “they will still want to wear a mask if the virus spreads,” Anthony Fauci, senior adviser to US President Joe Biden, said in an interview.

“A small spark of the virus is enough and it will spread another outbreak, that is the prediction,” said the expert on when life will return to normal.

Some scholars, including Cap. Murray admits that the situation can improve. New vaccines developed in record time appear to help reduce the number of people hospitalized and deaths, even as new strains spread.

Many vaccine developers are rapidly producing new doses of vaccines to speed up the vaccination process, which can provide effective protection against strains of the virus. In addition, the researchers explain that many things still need to be learned and elucidated about the immune system’s ability to fight the virus.

Since early 2021, the incidence of COVID-19 has been declining in many countries, with the first groups of people vaccinated, and the number of severe cases and hospital admissions has dropped significantly, Reuters reports.

Worse than the flu

Ch. According to Murray, if South Africa or other similar strains continue to spread rapidly, the number of COVID-19 cases ending up in hospital treatment or death could be four times the number of flu cases next winter.

It is estimated that half of the United States population will be vaccinated, with a vaccine efficacy of 65 percent. In the worst case, this would mean that up to 200 thousand people would be registered in the country during the winter. Deaths related to COVID-19. This estimate is based on data available from the federal government on annual flu victims.

The current Ch. Murray-led institute’s forecast, which runs through June 1, predicts that by then, another 62,000 will be recorded in the United States and another 690,000 worldwide. deaths from COVID-19. The forecasting model includes assumptions about vaccination rates and the prevalence of South African and Brazilian strains.

Changes in scientists’ attitudes have led to more cautious announcements by national governments about when the pandemic will end. Britain announced last week that it plans a slow loosening of some of the world’s toughest restrictions, despite having one of the fastest vaccination rates.

The US government’s predictions about when it will be possible to return to a more normal way of life are changing more and more. Initially, it is planned that it can be lived more or less normally at the end of summer, then at Christmas and finally in March 2022.

Israel has introduced a “green passport,” an immunity document for people who have recovered or been vaccinated against COVID-19, giving them the opportunity to return to hotels or theaters. The document is only valid for six months, as it is unclear how long the immunity will last.

“What does it mean to survive the most critical phase of this pandemic?” Asks Stefan Baralis, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.
While some experts talk about whether countries could completely eradicate COVID-19 through vaccination and strict quarantine, Baralis believes the goals are more modest but still significant.

“I think the important thing is that hospitals are not overcrowded, intensive care units are not full, people do not die at a tragic rate,” explains the expert.

A blow to science

The new coronavirus was like a permanent target from the beginning.

At the beginning of the pandemic, prominent scientists warned that the virus could become endemic and “never go away.” Among those who spoke was Michael Ryan, Director of Emergencies for the World Health Organization.

However, they still had a lot to learn, including whether it would be possible to develop a coronavirus vaccine and how quickly the virus would mutate. It was unclear whether the coronavirus would be more like measles, stopped almost entirely in countries with high vaccination rates, or rather the flu that infects millions of people around the world each year.

For most of the 2020s, most scientists were increasingly shocked by the virus. However, they continued to ensure that the coronavirus had not changed so dramatically as to become more contagious or more deadly.

The big breakthrough came in November. Pfizer Inc. and its partner in Germany, BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc, have announced that clinical trials show that the vaccines they develop are about 95 percent. effective to protect against COVID-19. This effectiveness is far greater than that of any flu vaccine.

At least some of the researchers who spoke to Reuters said that even after learning the results, they did not expect the vaccines to kill the virus. Still, most researchers told Reuters that data from the scientific community had fueled hope that COVID-19 could be substantially destroyed if the world’s population was vaccinated quickly enough.

“Before Christmas, we were quite optimistic about all these vaccines. Not all of us expected to be able to develop vaccines with such high efficacy at the same time,” recalls Azra Ghani, director of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology at Imperial College London.

The optimism turned out to be short-lived. In late December, the UK announced a new strain of the virus that is spreading faster. It soon became the dominant strain of coronavirus in the country. Around the same time, scientists learned about the effects of the more rapidly spreading varieties from South Africa and Brazil.

Phil Dormitzer, Pfizer’s chief vaccine scientist, told Reuters in November that the success of the US drugmaker’s vaccine had shown the virus to be “resistant to immunization.” The scientist called it a “breakthrough for humanity.” However, in early January he acknowledged that the virus strains “opened a new chapter”, so companies would have to constantly monitor mutations that could undermine the effects of vaccines.

In late January, the effects on vaccines became even clearer. Data from clinical trials with Novavax showed that the company’s vaccine was 89% effective in the UK, but COVID-19 was only 50% effective in South Africa. A week later, data was released showing that the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine provides only limited protection against the South African strain.

The recent change in the opinion of scientists is completely logical, several scientists told Reuters. Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology in San Diego, described the change as a “blow to science”: In December, he had no doubt that the so-called “functional eradication” of the coronavirus would be possible, similar to measles. .

But now, according to Sh. Crotty, “the main objective and the decision is the same as on December 1 or January 1: vaccinate as many people as possible, but the expected result is different.”

This week, a senior German disease control official warned of a “new direction” in the pandemic.

The proportion of new infections with the B.1.1.7 strain of the German coronavirus in Germany has increased by about 40% in recent months, according to the Robert Koch Institute.

“The B.1.1.7 variety is expected to soon become dominant in Germany,” Lothar Wieler, director of the Robert Koch Institute, told reporters in Berlin.

“When that happens, it will be even more difficult to control the virus,” he said.

At the same conference, Health Minister Jens Spahn spoke and said that the number of new infections, despite the measures introduced, is stagnant and in some areas has started to grow again.

Other countries have already reported that new strains of the virus are beginning to dominate. The Czech Republic is now feeling the consequences very badly.