- Experts say COVID-19 will likely continue to fade in the United States, but the disease probably will not disappear.
- They expect COVID-19 could be similar to the influenza virus that re-emerges every year in a slightly different form.
- They say there are still many unknowns about the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, including how often it will mutate.
Though the COVID-19 pandemic is starting to fade in the United States, it’s unlikely that the novel coronavirus is going away, at least for the near future.
As case rates drop and more people become vaccinated, COVID-19 will likely transition from a pandemic – the worldwide spread of a new disease – to an endemic phase, where the virus is always present in the population in some form, albeit under controllable levels, experts say.
“It’s likely that it will become endemic because people carry it without knowing or showing symptoms, and some people have diminished immunity that will continue to make them susceptible even post-vaccination,” said Gerald Commissiong, CEO of Todos Medical, Ltd., a COVID-19 screening and testing company.
“Combined with the likelihood of waning immunity and emerging variants, we should expect that COVID-19 is a virus that will be with us for the long haul,” Commissiong told Healthline.
Source: healthline