People tired of a pandemic that has dragged on longer than announced may need to prepare for a worrying outlook, as the head of the EU’s ECDC health agency has warned that Covid-19 is likely to remain forever.
“It seems very well adapted to humans, so we must be prepared for it to remain with us.” Andrea Ammon, head of the European Center for Disease Prevention, based in Stockholm, told AFP from France in an interview on Friday.
In fact, Ammon said it seems more likely that the virus will continue to circulate indefinitely than it will disappear. “It wouldn’t be the first virus that is with us forever, so it’s not an unusual feature for a virus”, she added.
Despite the development of several vaccines to combat Covid-19, the virus may continue to proliferate, said Ammon. Although health officials are confident that vaccines are effective in preventing people from contracting illnesses caused by Covid-19, it will take more time to assess how effective they can be in reducing the spread of the virus.
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It is also unclear how effective vaccines will be at dulling new strains of coronavirus. Ammon said that Covid-19 could end up being relatively stable, meaning that the same vaccines can be used against it year after year, or it could change significantly over time to require adaptations of inoculations, such as those used for seasonal flu to every year.
Even as the rate of new infections slowing after the peak in December and January, Ammon said governments must continue to impose restrictions on Covid-19. “We are really not out of danger,” she said. “Everyone is fed up with the measurements, but when you’re doing a long distance journey … (you) have to run the last few kilometers.”
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