“Endemic disease” does not mean giving up the fight against Covid-19

Britain on March 14 became the first European country to announce this week it would end all travel restrictions imposed to prevent and control Covid-19, reopening to tourism after nearly two years. close the door. Meanwhile, in France, life is also gradually returning to normal when vaccination cards and masks will no longer be required in closed spaces, except in hospitals or on long-distance vehicles.

In Asia, the Japanese government is planning to relax the criteria for lifting key epidemic prevention measures to reduce the impact on socio-economic activities, while India is expected to to resume regular international flights from March 27 to.

The figures show that, while the number of Covid-19 cases globally remains high, in countries with high vaccination rates, the link between cases and deaths seems to have weakened, even though is broken. According to Dr. Daniel McQuillen, circulating does not necessarily mean mild, but there are indications that with high levels of population immunity, the severity of Covid-19 becomes close to the severity of the disease. seasonal flu.

However, the World Health Organization and experts also warn against all subjective sentiments regarding Covid-19 as an endemic disease. Although the epidemic has been somewhat controlled, the risk of disease is still hidden. Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 technical team, warned: “The virus is on its way to becoming endemic. However, it is important to remember that we are still in the middle of a pandemic if you look at both the level of transmission and the impact on essential health services. Now for sure we see less hospitalization rates but the large number of cases are really putting a strain on the health care system. So the impact we’re seeing is really significant.”

The fact has also shown that the evolution of the pandemic has rapidly changed with the appearance of new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, causing countries that have experienced a prolonged period of stable epidemics to have to wait. face the consequences of waves of infections and hospitalizations. Along with that, the risk of reinfection also poses a challenge for governments when considering any decision to relax restrictions. According to epidemiologist Emmanuel Piednoir of France, the situation today is really different. The world is facing a variant with more immune system attack properties.

“The sharp increase in reinfection with the Omicron variant has posed a number of problems. The first is that we still don’t really know how long the immunity acquired after infection with the Omicron variant will last. Also because Omicron is less likely to cause serious disease, the immunostimulating power of this variant is also milder and therefore less protective, ”said Piednoir.

A study published in the journal Nature found that, unlike previous strains, the highly contagious Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus significantly increased the number of people being re-infected with Covid-19. As in the UK, before the Omicron mutation appeared in mid-November 2021, the risk of reinfection accounted for about 1% of Covid-19 cases, but this rate has increased to about 10% today.