Certain diseases have decimated thousands of humans and then disappeared from radar. Omnipresent today, the Covid-19 could also fall into oblivion one day.
- Since the start of the recall campaign, 28,210,956 people have received a third dose of the Covid vaccine.
- In addition, since the start of the vaccination campaign in France, 53,239,828 people have received at least one injection (i.e. 79% of the total population) and 52,004,661 people now have a complete vaccination schedule (i.e. 77.1% of the total population).
Today, only two diseases have been completely eradicated from our planet: smallpox and rinderpest. Could Covid-19 have the same fate, and if so under what conditions?
animal tank
“For this, we must ensure that it has no animal reservoir, that is to say, an animal species through which the virus circulates discreetly and freely, and from which humans will reinfect during contact with it”, explains to Trust My Science Christophe Batejat, deputy head of the Biological Emergency Response Unit at the Institut Pasteur and of the “Environment and Infectious Risks” Research and Expertise Unit.
“Animals can be vaccinated, if necessary, to stop this transmission. This is, for example, what has been done for rabies in France with the mass vaccination of foxes. Currently, knowledge on this subject for SARS- CoV-2 are poor, and that’s the whole point of the World Health Organization’s new expert panel, the SAGOwho will have to look into the matter”, he continues.
An endemic disease?
For Pr Claire Andréjak, pulmonologist at the Amiens-Picardie University Hospital and head of a pneumo-infectiology research group (GREPI), it is more likely that Covid-19 will turn into a commonplace disease. “Sras-cov-2 will not disappear, we will live with it. If Omicron does indeed prove to be very contagious and not very pathogenic, it could replace Delta, allow the long-awaited herd immunity and become a classic winter virus, which we can let it circulate because serious cases will remain limited. Of course, the follow-up is still too weak, and these encouraging trends remain to be confirmed!”, explains the doctor.
According to one study published in January 2021, SARS-CoV-2 will indeed become endemic, that is to say, it will disappear in certain regions but will continue to circulate in other places. “I believe that Covid-19 will be eliminated from some countries, but with a permanent (and perhaps seasonal) risk of reintroduction from places where vaccination coverage and public health measures have not been good enough”Judge Christopher Dye, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford.
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