First pandemic then endemic?
New expert assessments: what that means for the Corona crisis now
© sunok / Shutterstock
When will the pandemic finally be over? A question that many are probably asking themselves. But with the end of the pandemic, the corona virus will not simply go away. It will become more of a companion to people. The pandemic becomes an endemic.
In most federal states, shopping without a mask is possible again, larger celebrations or simply meeting friends are allowed again. From next week you will probably only have to isolate yourself for five days if you have been infected with Corona. The numbers are also falling, the Robert Koch Institute reported no deaths for the first time (as of May 2, 2022). Does this all sound like the end of the pandemic? Will Corona go away now?
WHO has not yet ended “emergency of international concern”.
Officially, the pandemic phase is not over yet. The World Health Organization (WHO) would have to declare the “emergency of international concern” over – but the highest alert level is currently still in place worldwide. A little over two years ago, the WHO declared the corona outbreak a pandemic. But what actually characterizes a pandemic?
First of all, the concept of an epidemic should be explained. In an epidemic, a very contagious disease spreads quickly regionally and leads to an above-average number of sick people. These are mostly infectious diseases that are transmitted by viruses or bacteria. However, when speaking of a pandemic, the disease has spread beyond national borders or even globally. The WHO continuously records and monitors the occurrence and spread of pathogens and infectious diseases.
The risk from the corona virus for the population is still high
Not only the WHO, but also the German health authorities and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) continue to assess the overall risk from Covid-19 as “very high”, for those who have been vaccinated and those who have recovered as “high” and for those who have been boosted as “moderate”. The virus has not yet disappeared, it is still contagious and an infection can still be fatal.
Nevertheless, the situation has improved compared to the previous year. “We can actually speak of the beginning of the endemic,” says virologist Marco Binder, who researches Sars-CoV-2 at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, to the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland”.
What exactly is an endemic?
Endemics are understood to mean regionally frequent diseases with recurring outbreaks, which affect a large proportion of the people living in the region. As tempting as it is, the word endemic does not derive from the word endemic. An endemic condition means: The virus stays. Only the underlying forces change. Immunity in the population increases over time – through vaccinations or infections. As increased protection is built up, the virus will spread more slowly and people will become less and only mildly infected.
What sounds harmless at first should not be underestimated. An exact prediction cannot be made. Over the past few years, the coronavirus has shown how changeable it can be. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach warned in a FAZ interview: “These are not legalities. Corona can develop in the direction of ‘Omicron minus’ or ‘Delta plus’,” said the health expert. “I really don’t want to be a pessimist, but the idea that Corona will turn itself into a harmless cold virus is wishful thinking.”
The virus is still present in an endemic phase
A good example here is malaria. The disease is considered “endemic” in about a hundred countries, but still kills around 600,000 people a year worldwide. So that means that just because people build up greater protection, the virus does not have to become less harmless at the same time.
An endemic has many faces: “In the best case, the virus becomes more harmless and only triggers small and locally limited outbreaks,” says the Federal Minister of Health. In the worst case, we would end up in an endemic in which a dangerous variant is dominant, Lauterbach continues.
Germany is slowly approaching the endemic phase
There is no precise point in time when the pandemic will assume an endemic character; the transition is usually fluid. There are just as few fixed parameters, according to the virologist Binder from the Cancer Research Institute in Heidelberg. He based his assessment on the fact that the corona virus is no longer new to the immune system of most people worldwide due to vaccinations and infections. More than two years ago, things looked very different.
Whether the corona virus, like the flu, sometimes causes many thousands of deaths per season in Germany or whether it will become a more harmless cold virus remains to be seen. According to Binder, a balance will only be established over the coming years. The transition from a pandemic to an endemic course varies from region to region – across Europe but also within Germany. It depends on this development how dangerous waves of infection will be in the coming autumn and winter.
The epidemiologist Timo Ulrichs, who researches at the Akkon University in Berlin, points out that countries with high vaccination coverage and contact restrictions are more advanced than Germany. “Our vaccination gap will give the virus another opportunity in the coming autumn to trigger another pandemic wave of newly infected people. Now would actually be the time to counter this risk with a comprehensive vaccination campaign.”
Sources used: rnd.de, faz.de, rki.de, pharma-fakten.de, zeit.de