Get ready to learn more Greek letters. Scientists warn omicron’s massive spread practically ensures it won’t be the last variant of COVID-19, as every infection amounts to a chance for the virus to mutate.
“You know despite the advent of the antiviral pill, all the progress that we’ve made with vaccines, and herd immunity, most experts have really given up on the idea of eradicating COVID-19 infection altogether,” Straight Arrow News medical expert and cardiologist Dr. Payal Kohli said. “In fact, this belongs to a family of viruses called the coronaviruses which cause colds that have been around for decades. And we know that these viruses come back season after season, so I think it’s highly unlikely that we will completely eradicate Coronavirus or COVID-19 infections. But I do think that their rate may go down to a manageable amount.”
Managing the spread of could include the new omicron-specific vaccine Pfizer plans to release in March.
“The beginning of this year has brought a tsunami of cases,” Dr. Kohli said. “But what we’re seeing is that perhaps this is going to usher in going from pandemic to endemic, meaning that instead of having the virus control our lives, we live alongside the virus just like we do with the flu. And a big piece of that means controlling the spread of the infection. And the way that we do that is by getting a vaccine potentially every year, especially if the virus continues to mutate as it’s done so far, and new variants emerge. So I very much anticipate that we are probably going to need a vaccine every year just like we do with the flu shot. In fact, there are companies that are studying both the flu and the omicron or COVID vaccines in the same shot together.”
