The staggering spike in COVID-19 cases nationwide fueled mainly by the highly contagious omicron variant has many Americans questioning how long it will take for the pandemic to finally subside for good.

The changeover for an infectious disease from a pandemic to an endemic occurs when the virus is found regularly in a particular area or among people.

The key difference in an endemic condition is that the virus is more manageable with greater population immunity.

Bernard Camins, believes the Sars-Cov-2 virus will eventually become endemic over time.

It is important to understand while cases of the omicron variant are milder than others, another SARS-CoV-2 strain could very well appear in upcoming months that may pose more of a threat with a different set of mutations or just as virulent as delta.

"When a virus stays in a host, there's going to be select pressure exerted such that if a variant emerges that is more transmissible than the other variants, it's going to move through the host population faster," said Dr.

Much of the transmission of Sars-Cov-2 takes place before people experience symptoms, especially in severe cases.

Shaman carefully states not enough people have died from Sars-Cov-2 in comparison to the total population.

"Because of underreporting, maybe 20 million people have died from COVID-19, which is a huge number, but it's a drop in 7.7 billion hosts, particularly at the rate we reproduce ourselves," explained Dr.

To this researcher, this coronavirus has not yet depleted its pool of people to infect, and there is not enough evidence to show a selected pressure toward a milder variant.

We'll say roughly two variants per year come along that are causing outbreaks, and it's only having looked at a five-year record that we're going to start to say it's the pattern [the virus has] fallen into," explained Dr.

With over one in five COVID tests resulting positive, those patients getting sick with COVID-19 during the omicron surge may have some added immunity.

Steinberg mentions those breakthrough cases for the fully vaccinated may act as a booster when it comes to immunity - at least to that variant.

She states whether this infection will provide immunity for a future variant is still a question due to possibly further mutations.

But because so many people are infected right now, I suspect that this particular surge isn't going to last very long.

Steinberg says people can look at COVID-19 prevention like dressing in layers for the winter - every addition helps.

Another layer is the fact that a lot of people who get it, will have some immunity, at least for a while.