As the Omicron variant gains momentum in Europe and the United States, scientists are rewriting their expectations for the COVID-19 pandemic next year.
Just weeks ago, disease experts were predicting that countries would begin to emerge from the pandemic in 2022 after enduring a series of surges driven by the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants. First among them would be populations with a significant amount of exposure to the coronavirus, through a combination of infections and vaccination.
In those places, COVID was expected to ease into an endemic disease, hopefully with less-severe periodic or seasonal outbreaks. Vaccines, available for much of 2021 only in wealthy nations, could reach the majority of the global population by the end of the year ahead.
But the rapid spread of the highly-mutated Omicron variant, identified in late November, and its apparent ability to reinfect people at a higher rate than its predecessors, is undermining that hope.
Already, countries are reverting to measures used earlier in the pandemic: restricting travel, reimposing mask requirements, advising against large gatherings for the winter holidays. While it is not quite back to square one, much more of the world will need to be vaccinated or exposed to COVID to get past the worst of the pandemic, disease experts said.
Even after COVID becomes a more endemic disease, new variants will spawn outbreaks and seasonal surges for years to come.
"There's always going to be a baseline number of COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "A lot of people haven't come to terms with that."
The hope is that the virus diminishes to the point where it is no longer disruptive. But living with COVID-19 does not mean the virus is no longer a threat.
