Covid has been a challenge for the whole world for the past two years. Every year this pandemic comes back with new variants and makes the situation worse. With the help of safety measures and vaccine boosters, we are somehow able to overpower this virus or its variants of it. Likewise the last two years this summer a sudden spike is seen in the covid-19 case. More hospitalizations, rising cases, and deaths are indicating that maybe this year too it is coming back with a new variant. the health experts told that this year it may not take the form of an endemic.
Reports show that in the last seven days the average of new cases per day is approximately 47K. It is down from a peak of more than 800K in January. Dr. Fauci, an American physician-scientist and immunologist, Chief Medical Advisor to the President of the United States said in a statement the Covid -19 pandemic is not over. But on another side, the health experts told that besides of rising of covid cases, it may not be as disastrous as it was in the last two summers or like the omicron surge recently. According to health experts this year the population of the US has good immunity because of previous infections, vaccines, and boosters doses. Also, antivirals are easily accessible to unvaccinated people to prevent hospitalizations. In short, they said that this time they are already prepared to deal with the situation.
On the other hand, the researchers show that the immunity decrease with time and the new variant can evade.
Pandemic situation this summer
Experts check the trends seen in coronavirus cases in spring to estimate what could be the pandemic situation during these summers. Analysis of data showed that the number of cases in April doubled prior to the last month while the number of deaths decreased to 327 which is half of the march data.
Dr. Keri Althoff, professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said that the surge of cases this summer will completely depend on the emerging variant. “Transmissible variants are good at finding pockets of unvaccinated people and those people are more at risk of hospitalization and death.”
Most Health experts are expecting that this year may be an end to the pandemic and the country will come out of the pandemic phase. It is expected that it may take the form of seasonal flu and for one or two weeks it can cause misery, but a low risk of death.
Steps to prevent the effect of the coming Covid wave
It is suggested by the experts that all the measures set for a covid test person should be followed i.e.isolation from family, quarantine, wearing a mask, etc. They said that the country is on its way to coming out the effect of it, but it is necessary to prevent severe illness so that the spike in cases doesn’t lead to more hospitalizations and deaths. “I’m hopeful that we’re approaching the point where we can disconnect the surge in cases from a surge in hospitalizations,” Experts said. “That’s where we want to go.