It’s too soon to tell if Omicron heralds end of the pandemic - Infectious disease expert, Dr Fauci says

 

 The United States' top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci has said it’s too soon in the omicron variant’s course to know whether it signifies the beginning of the end of the pandemic.

According to Fauci, he doesn't know whether Omicron, the highly transmissible yet purportedly milder strain of the coronavirus will dilute the more severe prevalent ones and take it over to become endemic. 

 Fauci, who is also the White House chief medical advisor said on Monday night, January 17. 

“I would hope that that’s the case,” he told the World Economic Forum at a panel during its annual meeting, held virtually this year instead of in Davos.

“But that would only be the case if we don’t get another variant that eludes the immune response of the prior variant.”

 

Also, the panel of public health experts whom Fauci spoke alongside at the virtual Davos gathering were divided on whether it would be the final strain.

“It is indeed too early really to call it endemic,” said Annelies Wilder-Smith, professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, according to CNBC.  

“There is a high probability that we will have a new variant.” 

"The best that can be hoped for, even if this is the final strain of COVID-19, is that the disease becomes endemic and treatable", Fauci said – present, but “at a level that does not disrupt society.”

 

He then added that once coronavirus had stopped coming in huge waves, people could strip off their masks.

“It’s not going to be that you’ll eliminate this disease completely,” Fauci said, according to CNBC. “But hopefully, it will be at such a low level that it doesn’t disrupt our normal social, economic and other interactions with each other. To me, that’s what the new normal is.”