As the third winter of the coronavirus pandemic approaches in the northern hemisphere, scientists are warning weary governments and populations to prepare for more waves of COVID-19. In the United States alone, there could be as many as a million infections a day this winter, Chris Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent modeling group at the University of Washington that is tracking the pandemic, told Reuters. . That would be about double the current daily tally. Across the UK and Europe, scientists are predicting a series of waves of COVID as people spend more time indoors in the colder months, this time with almost no blanket or social distancing restrictions. But while cases may rise again in the coming months, deaths and hospitalizations are unlikely to rise at the same rate, experts said, helped by vaccination and boosters, earlier infection, milder variants and availability of highly effective treatments for COVID. “The people who are most at risk are the ones who have never seen the virus and there are hardly any left,” Murray said. These predictions raise new questions about when countries will move out of the COVID emergency phase and into endemic disease, where communities with high vaccination rates see fewer cases, possibly on a seasonal basis. Many experts had predicted that the transition would begin in early 2022, but the arrival of the highly mutated Omicron variant of the coronavirus dashed those expectations. “We have to put aside the idea of ’is the pandemic over?’ said Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He and others see COVID morphing into an endemic threat that continues to cause a high burden of disease. “Someone once told me that the definition of endemic is life getting a little worse,” he added. The potential wild card remains whether a new variant will emerge that outperforms Omicron’s dominant sub-variants. If this variant also causes more severe disease and is better able to evade previous immunity, this would be the “worst-case scenario”, according to a recent World Health Organization (WHO) report in Europe. “All scenarios (with new variants) point to the potential for a large future wave at a level as bad as or worse than the 2020/2021 epidemic waves,” said the report, based on modeling by Imperial College London.
CONFYING FACTORS
Many of the disease experts interviewed by Reuters said that forecasting about COVID has become much more difficult as many people rely on quick home tests that are not reported to government health officials, obscuring infection rates. BA.5, the Omicron subvariant currently causing the peak of infections in many regions, is highly contagious, meaning that many patients hospitalized for other diseases may test positive for it and be counted among the severe cases; even if COVID-19 is not the source of their distress. The scientists said other unknowns complicating their predictions include whether a combination of vaccination and infection with COVID — so-called hybrid immunity — provides greater protection in humans, as well as how effective booster campaigns might be. “Anyone who says they can predict the future of this pandemic is either overconfident or lying,” said David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Experts are also closely monitoring developments in Australia, where a resurgence of flu season combined with COVID is overwhelming hospitals. They say it’s likely that Western nations will see a similar pattern after several quiet flu seasons. “If it happens there, it can happen here. Let’s prepare for a proper flu season,” said John McCauley, director of the Worldwide Influenza Center at the Francis Crick Institute in London. The WHO has said that each country still needs to approach new waves with all the tools in the pandemic arsenal – from vaccinations to interventions such as testing and social distancing or covering up. Israel’s government recently halted routine tests for COVID on travelers at its international airport, but is prepared to resume the practice “within days” if faced with a large increase, said Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of the public health service of the country. “When there is a wave of infections, we have to wear masks, we have to do tests,” he said. “This is living with COVID.” Reporting by Jennifer Rigby and Julie Steenhuysen. Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell. Edited by Michele Gershberg and Bill Berkrot
