![]() There’s going to be an opinion-based consensus," said Caroline Buckee, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, in an interview with the magazine Science on March 4, 2022. “There’s not going to be a scientific threshold. This is why the epidemiologists do not believe the end of the pandemic will be announced any time soon. Sofonea believes the only way to tell if we have reached the end of the pandemic is to “look at hospital saturation". Thanks to widespread vaccination, more effective treatments and variants such as Omicron which seem to result in fewer hospitalisations, the impact of Covid-19 on national healthcare systems is much less severe than it was a year ago.Īnd simply declaring the end of the pandemic will not mean that Covid-19 has been eradicated, especially in regions – often less wealthy – where vaccination is progressing slowly. The consequences of the end of the pandemic For example, the "epidemic threshold" in France for Covid-19 is 98 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.īut having the most reliable data does not always guarantee unanimity. "WHO was criticised for declaring the start of the Covid-19 pandemic too late” in March 2020, said Sofonea. If surpassed, the country is supposed to report to the WHO that it is experiencing an epidemic outbreak. In the case of Covid-19, the most scientific approach would be to "note when the main criterion for declaring a pandemic – that there are epidemics on at least three continents – no longer pertains to Covid-19", said Coppieters.Įach country establishes a virus circulation threshold. "We don't have the means to aim for Sars-CoV-2’s total eradication," said Sofonea. In May 1980, the 33rd World Health Assembly confidently declared that smallpox had totally disappeared from all the world’s countries. The epidemiologists seem to agree that there will be no definitive end to the Covid-19 crisis like there was with smallpox. It is unclear whether they will share Biden and Ghebreyesus’ optimism in their upcoming report, expected in mid-October. These experts were still in favour of designating it as such in their latest report, published on July 12. The WHO has a committee of experts who have been giving their opinion every three months since January 2020 on whether the situation should continue to be classified as a pandemic. Officially, since it was the WHO that “declared the start of the pandemic, it is up to it to decide when the pandemic ends”, said Mircea Sofonea, an epidemiologist at the University of Montpellier. "Even among the scientific community, you would get really different answers. There is no one definition of what the end of the pandemic means," said Rachael Piltch-Loeb, a public health policy specialist at Harvard University, in an interview with National Geographic on August 6, 2021. In France the tone is far from triumphant, as Santé Publique France (France’s public health agency) has been warning of a rise in cases since the beginning of September.Ĭhina does not seem ready to claim victory in its fight against Covid-19 either. More than 30 cities in China are still imposing partial or total lockdowns on more than 60 million inhabitants.īetween the optimism of some and the caution of others, it is difficult to know where things stand. As autumn approaches, we need to prepare for a new wave of infections in line with the trend shown by the virus in the past two years," Marco Cavaleri, the European Medicines Agency's head of vaccine strategy, said at an EMA press conference on September 20, 2022. "It can be disconcerting to hear about the end of the pandemic in Europe when several countries are re-launching an autumn vaccination campaign," said Yves Coppieters, an epidemiologist at the Université Libre de Bruxelles.Įurope's medicines watchdog said Tuesday that Covid-19 cases and death rates were falling, but warned the pandemic "is still ongoing" as it urged countries to roll out booster programmes before the winter. ". The US went from more than 3,000 deaths a day at the beginning of Biden's term in January 2021 to about 400 in September, according to the CDC (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the US public health agency).īut this optimism may seem at odds with what is happening in other parts of the world. Let's finish the job! /wzNaQ5kF3P- Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus September 15, 2022 Otherwise, we run the risk of more variants, more deaths, disruption and uncertainty. We've never been in a better place to end the #COVID19 pandemic, but only if all countries, manufacturers, communities and individuals step up and seize this opportunity. ![]()
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