The news for those hoping to see… light in the depths of his pandemic tunnel coronavirus the next period is not good: At least for the next three to six months, as reported by Bloomberg in a report, conveying a message from scientists that they say we should expect more than what we have already gone through.
What do experts say according to Bloomberg? How with the outbreak of cases, schools will be closed and classes will be canceled. How will vaccinated inmates of nursing homes deal with new fears of infection? How employees are called to weigh the risks of returning to the office, as hospitals will be under excessive pressure, once again.
Almost everyone should either be infected or vaccinated before the end of the pandemic, all scientists agree. Maybe both. Some unlucky people will be infected with the virus more than once. The race between the transmission waves that lead to new mutations and the battle for global vaccination will not end before the coronavirus touches us all.
“I see ongoing outbreaks occurring around the world,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and an adviser to US President Joe Biden. The situation, he estimates, will then escalate, somewhat abruptly. And then there will be a new increase in cases in the fall and winter of 2021.
The virus is expected to spread to schools, transportation and workplaces
With billions of people in the world unvaccinated and little chance of eradicating the coronavirus, we should expect new outbreaks in schools, public transport and workplaces in the coming months, as the economy pushes for a restart. Even as immunity rates rise, there will always be people vulnerable to the virus: newborns, people who may or may not want to be vaccinated, and even people who have been vaccinated but are suffering from underlying diseases.
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The coming months, Bloomberg reports, will be difficult. A high risk is the occurrence of a mutation in the virus that will be resistant to vaccines. However, it is not the only risk, as there are many long-term effects of the coronavirus on the economy, markets, the pharmaceutical industry, the travel industry, etc.
“We do not know. “I can tell you that the coronavirus fire will not stop until it finds all the human fuel that can burn,” Osterholm said. Despite the extremely large waves of the pandemic and the relatively high vaccination rates, countries such as the USA, the United Kingdom, Russia and Israel are “flirting” with record cases. Immunization helps with the number of non-seriously ill people or deaths, but the outbreak means that the virus reaches young people and other groups who remain unvaccinated, leading to an increase in seriously ill people in those categories.
The fear of a new coronavirus mutation
Countries where vaccination has been low, such as Malaysia, Mexico, Iran and Australia, are in the midst of major epidemics fueled by the highly contagious Delta mutation. With the virus spreading uncontrollably to vast areas of the planet, a new mutation is not ruled out.
History shows that the common belief that viruses automatically weaken over time is wrong, Simmonsen notes. Although new mutations are not always more serious, “pandemics can actually become more deadly as they progress as the virus adapts,” he said. On the contrary, at the beginning of the pandemic, there was good reason to believe that vaccines would provide long-term protection, as is the case with vaccines given to children or vaccines for diseases such as polio.
Coronaviruses, on the other hand, have a mechanism of “self-correction” of the endogenous errors caused when the virus reproduces, reducing the chance of mutations occurring as it spreads from one person to another. However, the number of cases worldwide is so large that mutations occur anyway.
The pandemic has a great power of infection
“With the pandemic, we are seeing a huge contagion force,” Australian WHO official Kanda Subarao told Bloomberg. in influenza, requiring frequent vaccinations, in order to be effective, in the midst of spread.
Some researchers, according to the publication, estimate that the coronavirus is driven to become completely resistant to the first generation of vaccines. An unpublished study from Japan suggests that potentially dangerous Delta variants are already being collected in a global database used to monitor such developments.
However, information on circulating strains that have been shown to be resistant to the vaccine or cause higher mortality rates has not yet been subjected to the rigorous verification process. “This is a scenario that we hope will not be verified. “My God, then we have to do it all over again,” Simmonsen warns.
Other, more grim scenarios for the coming months include the emergence of a new flu virus or another coronavirus, which will be transmitted from animals to humans.
How will the coronavirus’s nightmare end?
What is clear is that the pandemic will not end for the next six months. Experts generally agree that the current outbreak will be halted when most people, perhaps 90% -95% of the world’s population, are certified immune, either through disease or through vaccination. Vaccination should be a key element, they emphasize. “Without the vaccine, a person is like a sitting duck, as the coronavirus will spread widely and spread to most this fall and winter,” Simmonsen said.
So far, more than 5.66 billion doses of the vaccine have been delivered worldwide, according to Bloomberg. However, success in areas such as the European Union, North America and China hides failure in other countries. In most African countries, vaccines have been given to less than 5% of the population in two doses, while in India, only 26% is covered.
Oxford University School of Medicine history professor Erica Charters argues that like other pandemics in the past, the present will end at different times and in different parts of the world. Governments are called upon to decide with what percentage of Covid-19 disease they can coexist. The factors vary. While in some countries they target zero cases, it is almost impossible to eradicate the virus completely.
Countries such as Denmark and Singapore, which have managed to keep cases at relatively low levels, are already moving into the future after the pandemic, with less restrictive measures. In contrast, countries such as the US and Britain are opening up even though new infections are near record levels.
At the same time, China, Hong Kong and New Zealand are focusing their efforts on eradicating the virus locally. Therefore, it will most likely be the last parts of the planet to leave behind the pandemic turmoil.
“The end will not be uniform”
“The end will not be uniform. Pandemic is a biological phenomenon, but it is also political and social. “Even now we have different approaches,” Charters explains.
It will upset and leave a lasting legacy for years to come. Until then, most of us will have to prepare for many more months in the shadow of the pandemic, according to Bloomberg.
As Professor Osterholm concludes: “We must approach it with our eyes open and with great humility. “Anyone who thinks we will finish in the next few days or months is making a big mistake.”
Source: Bloomberg.
The article Coronavirus: Bloomberg ominous forecasts for the next six months published in NewsIT .