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- Many people are making predictions about when the COVID-19 pandemic could end or be significantly reduced.
- According to recent mathematical modeling, the Delta variant is peaking and cases are expected to decrease steadily throughout the winter.
- We spoke with experts about what they expect for the next year.
As we approach the 2-year mark for the current COVID-19 crisis, experts are making predictions of how the situation could change by 2022.
Dr Anthony Fauci said in an interview with CNN that we could start controlling the pandemic in the spring, while Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel believes the pandemic could be over in a year.
And, according to recent mathematical modeling, the Delta variant is peaking, and cases are expected to decrease steadily throughout the winter.
Healthline has asked experts to assess the likelihood of those predictions and what they think it will take to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think at this point it’s hard to predict anything,” Dr. Vidya Mony, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, Calif., Told Healthline.
She also stressed that it was “quite optimistic” to believe that the pandemic would be over in a year, and stressed that the nature of the pandemic requires global solutions.
“By definition, this is an infectious disease that spreads around the world,” Mony said. “Unless we can immunize the whole world, it is entirely possible that we will continue to have variants and to have transmission. “
According to Mony, the United States may have ditched pandemic restrictions too soon.
“Although we know about the Delta variant and its deleterious effects in India, the United States began to open in June,” she said. “Which, as we all know, in retrospect was not the best recommendation.”
According to Dr. Charles Bailey, medical director of infection prevention at Providence Mission Hospital and Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Orange County, Calif., There is evidence that natural immunity is at least as protective as immunity produced by vaccination, and that a single dose of vaccine can further enhance natural immunity.
“These facts must be taken into account when developing national and international immunization policies,” he said.
“Providing an optional booster dose to recovered COVID patients who choose to take it would expand the pool of vaccine doses available to immunize vulnerable people who have not yet become ill,” he continued.
The COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Center predicts that the number of pandemic deaths will fall below 100 per day by March 2022.
Dr. Louis Morledge, an internist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, believes that new variants can “drastically change things.”
“I’m not sure it’s doable,” he said. “But I think if there is a super-spreader, for whatever reason, whether it’s a natural mutation, whether it’s [something] vaccinated immunity can fight, we’re going to be in a different circumstance.
But Morledge also believes vaccination could be the deciding factor in reducing deaths.
“For the most part what I see are people who are vaccinated, while there are breakthrough infections that do happen every now and then these tend to be very, very minor, tend to be very, very minor. not needing to access the next level of health care. People do not necessarily have to go to the emergency room, are not hospitalized, ”he said.
Morledge added that, provided we take care to put as many people as possible under the “vaccination umbrella,” life could be much easier in 6 to 12 months.
Dr David Hirschwerk, an infectious disease specialist at Northwell Health in Manhasset, New York, said that while vaccination may be the way out of the pandemic, reluctance to vaccinate, especially in children, makes it skeptical of the outcome.
“The more our population is vaccinated, the better the control of COVID will be,” he said, adding that the pandemic could be different in a year, but he “finds it hard to imagine that the virus will not remain in circulation” .
According to Hirschwerk, although there is no argument that expanded use of the vaccine will lead to better control of COVID-19, reluctance to vaccinate is a problem.
“This applies to adults who have not been vaccinated as well as to their support in getting their children vaccinated,” he said.
“I hope the models are correct, but there have been so many unforeseen surprises with this virus that I am unwilling to make a prediction,” Hirschwerk said.
Health officials and other experts have predicted that the pandemic will improve significantly by next year.
Experts say that while some of these predictions may prove to be correct, factors such as reopening the United States too early this year and reluctance to vaccinate could delay progress.
They also say that the sooner we get everyone – adults and children – vaccinated, the more likely we are to see improvement and overcome the current crisis in the months to come.
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