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Endemic Covid: Is the pandemic entering its endgame? - BBC News
Jan 15, 2022 1 min, 38 secs
Instead, the new buzzword we'll have to get used to is "endemic" - which means that Covid is, without doubt, here to stay.

Covid spread explosively around the world - but that fire cannot burn at such high intensity forever.

Epidemiologists, who study the spread of diseases, would consider a disease endemic when levels are consistent and predictable - unlike the "boom and bust" waves so far in the pandemic.

But Prof Azra Ghani, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, says other people are using it mean Covid is still around, but that we no longer need to restrict our lives.

"We have some huge killer diseases that we consider endemic," says Prof Ghani.

Smallpox was endemic for thousands of years and killed a third of people who were infected.

Malaria is endemic and causes around 600,000 deaths a year.

The high level of infections has come at a price, with more than 150,000 deaths in the UK.

Prof Hiscox - who sits on the government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group - says that means most people won't be badly affected.

There will be people - mostly the old and vulnerable - who will die from endemic Covid.

"If you're willing to tolerate zero deaths from Covid, then we're facing a whole raft of restrictions and it's not game over," Prof Hiscox explains.

The near certainty is there will be booster vaccines for the vulnerable come the autumn in order to top up their protection through winter.

Poorer countries are still waiting for vaccines to give to their most vulnerable people?

Meanwhile countries that kept Covid at arms' length have had very few deaths, but also have less immunity in their populations?

The World Health Organization has been clear the world is a long way off describing Covid as endemic.

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