“This virus is on its way to becoming endemic. There is no doubt about it,” the expert said, noting, however, that the pandemic is now “in full swing”: the incidence rate is growing, and with it the burden on the countries’ health systems. “We have not reached this stage yet,” she stressed.
The infectious disease specialist added that the virus is changing, so it is difficult to predict the development of a pandemic. In addition, different countries are fighting the pandemic in different ways, she noted.
“There is no such predictability here as with the flu and [other] typical seasonal infections. Maybe we will come to this, but we haven’t come yet,” van Kerkhove explained.
In December last year, WHO head Tedros Adanom Ghebreyesus suggested that 2022 could be the year of the end of the coronavirus pandemic.
The fact that the coronavirus is likely to become endemic, the organization’s expert David Heymann said back in December 2020.
On January 8, 2022, a group of Cypriot scientists reported the detection of a new variant of coronavirus in 25 samples. He has the same genetic basis with the delta strain, but there are mutations characteristic of omicron. This type of virus is called “deltacron”.
According to van Kerkhove, the data on the appearance of the hybrid could have appeared as a result of contamination of the virus sample taken for sequencing.