Infectious disease experts recently suggested the COVID-19 vaccine might not be enough to stop the coronavirus from being endemic, meaning that it would continue to spread throughout the world and people would need to learn how to live with it.
What’s going on?
Dr. David Heymann, who led the WHO’s infectious disease unit during the SARS epidemic, recently said governments might be too reliant on a vaccine as a magical cure that will get rid of the coronavirus, CNBC reports.
The reality, he said, is the virus could last much longer.
What he’s saying:
- “The difficulty right now is that in many countries, they are looking forward to a vaccine which may or may not come, which may or may not be effective in the short or long term, and they are looking at possible therapeutic (options) which could solve many of the problems,” Heymann said.
- “But, that’s not a good way to proceed at present. … We have to learn to live with the pandemic.”
- “I think the answer is that, yes, this will become endemic,” he continued. “We shouldn’t just be trying to suppress this virus out of existence or trying to suppress it to a level that’s unrealistic. We have to be able to suppress it to a level where it causes minimum damage while at the same time entering a country and becoming endemic.”
Not alone:
Last week, Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, said he could see the coronavirus becoming as endemic as the annual flu — something you don’t want to catch, but can linger every winter season, The Telegraph reports.