Experts have been saying it on all platforms for quite a while now: we will have to live with the COVID-19 virus for a long time to come. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be in a pandemic forever. Sooner or later, the disease will pass into the endemic stage. What does it mean and how do we get there? We explain to you.
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According to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the endemic phase of COVID-19 could arrive much faster than we think. It would be the Omicron variant, dominant in Quebec, which would allow us to reach it, according to the European authority.
“Nobody knows exactly when we will be at the end of the tunnel, but we will get there,” said Marco Cavaleri, head of vaccine strategy at the Amsterdam-based EMA, at a press conference on Tuesday.
He argues that increasing immunity in the population, through vaccination, and natural immunity, through infection, allows us to move “rapidly towards a scenario that will be closer to endemicity”.
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It should not be forgotten, however, he added, that we are still in a pandemic and that at present it is impossible to qualify the virus as endemic, in the same way as the flu, for example.
What is an endemic?
But what does it mean, exactly, a virus that becomes endemic? From an epidemiological point of view, it is when the situation is stable, in terms of the number of infections, but also the impacts on our way of life and on our health system.
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“The idea is to end up with a disease that will not overload our health system and that will not be too deadly or harmful to the health of individuals. It is also a disease which, in terms of health measures, will not have too much impact on our way of life”, specifies the one who makes videos in which he popularizes COVID-19 on TikTok and Instagram.
Concretely, the objective is that the reproduction rate of the virus, commonly known as “R0”, is one, that is to say that an infected person transmits COVID-19 only to one other person, explains Kevin L’Espérance.
How do we get there?
At the risk of repeating ourselves, we will be able to put an end to the pandemic and move on to the endemic phase when everyone is immunized. Of course, it is better to achieve this immunity through vaccination, since the effectiveness of immunity and side effects are more predictable, notes the epidemiologist candidate for the doctorate in public health.
It can also be reached by natural infection. This scenario is less desirable, however, because of the risks of the disease and the variable effectiveness of immunity from person to person.
Photo QMI Agency, Joël Lemay
“Fortunately, here in Quebec, we are well immunized. But this is not the case everywhere in the world and that will always put us at risk of seeing a new variant emerge which could be more dangerous for humans, which would compromise our efforts. [pour] reach more endemic levels,” he adds.
“All indicators point to endemic”
And even if the pandemic seems to drag on, Kevin L’Espérance wants to be reassuring. “All the indicators point to [l’endémicité]. There is no reason to believe that we will not one day reach an endemic level. It would be surprising if we still had breaking waves like the one we’re seeing right now.”
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But when will that day come? The epidemiologist does not dare to pronounce as the EMA did. But he is hopeful that the situation will eventually improve. “Everything will depend on two factors: the transmissivity of the virus in the population and the immunity of the population.”
However, it is difficult to predict the exact date when endemicity will be reached.
What will life in the endemic phase be like?
Once we reach the endemic phase, what will happen to the masks? Will we still have to get tested?
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That too is hard to say, knowing that none of us have experienced this kind of situation before.
Kevin L’Espérance believes that masks will remain a habit, if only for symptomatic people. “It’s a matter of respect,” he says.
AFP
He also believes that screening tests will remain and become sufficiently refined to be easier to use and to allow faster results to be obtained.
“There are measures, certainly, which will remain, he adds. What is normality? We want to compare ourselves to how we lived pre-pandemic, but human beings have had to and have been able to adapt to new normals over time, and that’s what we’re going to have to do. It’s hard to predict how our lifestyles will change.”
— With AFP