JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

What does it mean for COVID-19 to be endemic?

by

1132 days ago
20220120
FILE - People wearing a face mask to protect against the spread of coronavirus walk along a street in downtown Barcelona, Spain, July 3, 2021. Some European countries such as Spain are making tentative plans for when they might start treating COVID-19 as an "endemic" disease, but the World Health Organization and other officials have warned that the world is nowhere close to declaring the pandemic over. (AP Photo/Joan Mateu, File)

FILE - People wearing a face mask to protect against the spread of coronavirus walk along a street in downtown Barcelona, Spain, July 3, 2021. Some European countries such as Spain are making tentative plans for when they might start treating COVID-19 as an "endemic" disease, but the World Health Organization and other officials have warned that the world is nowhere close to declaring the pandemic over. (AP Photo/Joan Mateu, File)

By MARIA CHENG | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

 

(AP) — Some Eu­ro­pean coun­tries such as Spain are mak­ing ten­ta­tive plans for when they might start treat­ing COVID-19 as an “en­dem­ic” dis­ease, but the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and oth­er of­fi­cials have warned that the world is nowhere close to de­clar­ing the pan­dem­ic over.

This AP EX­PLAIN­ER looks at what en­dem­ic means and the im­pli­ca­tions for the fu­ture.

 

What does it mean for a dis­ease to be en­dem­ic as op­posed to pan­dem­ic?

FILE - A health worker takes a swab sample collection for a COVID-19 Antigen test ahead of the Cruilla music festival in Barcelona, Spain, Friday, July 9, 2021. Some European countries such as Spain are making tentative plans for when they might start treating COVID-19 as an "endemic" disease, but the World Health Organization and other officials have warned that the world is nowhere close to declaring the pandemic over. (AP Photo/Joan Mateu)

FILE - A health worker takes a swab sample collection for a COVID-19 Antigen test ahead of the Cruilla music festival in Barcelona, Spain, Friday, July 9, 2021. Some European countries such as Spain are making tentative plans for when they might start treating COVID-19 as an "endemic" disease, but the World Health Organization and other officials have warned that the world is nowhere close to declaring the pandemic over. (AP Photo/Joan Mateu)

 

Dis­eases are en­dem­ic when they oc­cur reg­u­lar­ly in cer­tain ar­eas ac­cord­ing to es­tab­lished pat­terns, while a pan­dem­ic refers to a glob­al out­break that caus­es un­pre­dictable waves of ill­ness.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion has said that re­defin­ing the coro­n­avirus as an en­dem­ic dis­ease is still “a ways off,” ac­cord­ing to Cather­ine Small­wood, an in­fec­tious dis­eases ex­pert in the agency’s Eu­ro­pean head­quar­ters in Copen­hagen, Den­mark. “We still have a huge amount of un­cer­tain­ty and a virus that is evolv­ing quick­ly,” she said ear­li­er this month.

For many coun­tries, des­ig­nat­ing a dis­ease as en­dem­ic means that few­er re­sources will be avail­able to com­bat it, since it will like­ly no longer be con­sid­ered a pub­lic health emer­gency.

 

Who will de­cide when COVID-19 is en­dem­ic?

FILE - People line up at a rapid swab testing site in Rome, Dec. 30, 2021. Some European countries are making tentative plans for when they might start treating COVID-19 as an "endemic" disease, but the World Health Organization and other officials have warned that the world is nowhere close to declaring the pandemic over. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)

FILE - People line up at a rapid swab testing site in Rome, Dec. 30, 2021. Some European countries are making tentative plans for when they might start treating COVID-19 as an "endemic" disease, but the World Health Organization and other officials have warned that the world is nowhere close to declaring the pandemic over. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)

 

Most wealthy coun­tries will prob­a­bly make that de­ci­sion them­selves de­pend­ing on how the virus is cir­cu­lat­ing with­in their bor­ders and on the po­ten­tial for new cas­es to cause big out­breaks. The COVID-19 vac­cines, med­i­cines and oth­er mea­sures wide­ly avail­able in rich coun­tries will like­ly help them curb out­breaks long be­fore the virus is brought un­der con­trol glob­al­ly.

The WHO does not tech­ni­cal­ly de­clare pan­demics. Its high­est alert lev­el is a glob­al health emer­gency, and COVID-19 has war­rant­ed that dis­tinc­tion since Jan­u­ary 2020. The U.N. health agency has con­vened an ex­pert com­mit­tee every three months since then to re­assess the sit­u­a­tion.

It’s like­ly the pan­dem­ic will be over when the WHO’s ex­perts de­clare that COVID-19 no longer qual­i­fies as a glob­al emer­gency, but the cri­te­ria for that de­ci­sion are not pre­cise­ly de­fined.

“It’s some­what a sub­jec­tive judg­ment be­cause it’s not just about the num­ber of cas­es. It’s about sever­i­ty and it’s about im­pact,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emer­gen­cies chief.

Oth­ers have point­ed out that des­ig­nat­ing COVID-19 as en­dem­ic is ar­guably a po­lit­i­cal ques­tion rather than a sci­en­tif­ic one, and it speaks to how much dis­ease and death na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties and their cit­i­zens are will­ing to tol­er­ate.

 

What is Spain propos­ing?

FILE - A nurse holds vials of AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 during a vaccination campaign at WiZink indoor arena in Madrid, April 9, 2021. Some European countries such as Spain are making tentative plans for when they might start treating COVID-19 as an "endemic" disease, but the World Health Organization and other officials have warned that the world is nowhere close to declaring the pandemic over. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File)

FILE - A nurse holds vials of AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 during a vaccination campaign at WiZink indoor arena in Madrid, April 9, 2021. Some European countries such as Spain are making tentative plans for when they might start treating COVID-19 as an "endemic" disease, but the World Health Organization and other officials have warned that the world is nowhere close to declaring the pandemic over. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File)

 

Span­ish Prime Min­is­ter Pe­dro Sanchez said last week that falling death rates for COVID-19 sug­gest that it’s time for Eu­ro­pean of­fi­cials to start con­sid­er­ing whether the dis­ease should be con­sid­ered en­dem­ic. That means Span­ish of­fi­cials would no longer need to record every COVID-19 in­fec­tion and that peo­ple with symp­toms would not nec­es­sar­i­ly be test­ed, but they would con­tin­ue to be treat­ed if they are sick. The pro­pos­al has been dis­cussed with some EU of­fi­cials, but no de­ci­sions have been made.

In Oc­to­ber, the Eu­ro­pean Cen­tre for Dis­ease Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol is­sued ad­vice on how coun­tries might tran­si­tion to more rou­tine sur­veil­lance of COVID-19 af­ter the acute phase of the pan­dem­ic. Among its rec­om­men­da­tions, the agency said coun­tries should in­te­grate their mon­i­tor­ing of the coro­n­avirus with oth­er dis­eases like flu and test a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of COVID-19 cas­es, rather than at­tempt­ing to test every per­son with symp­toms.

 

Does en­dem­ic mean the prob­lem is over?

FILE - Taia Ilhachamia, 71, receives the Pfizer vaccine during a COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Alfaro, northern Spain, May 13, 2021. Some European countries such as Spain are making tentative plans for when they might start treating COVID-19 as an "endemic" disease, but the World Health Organization and other officials have warned that the world is nowhere close to declaring the pandemic over. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos, File)

FILE - Taia Ilhachamia, 71, receives the Pfizer vaccine during a COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Alfaro, northern Spain, May 13, 2021. Some European countries such as Spain are making tentative plans for when they might start treating COVID-19 as an "endemic" disease, but the World Health Organization and other officials have warned that the world is nowhere close to declaring the pandemic over. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos, File)

 

No. Many se­ri­ous dis­eases, in­clud­ing tu­ber­cu­lo­sis and HIV, are con­sid­ered en­dem­ic in parts of the world and con­tin­ue to kill hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple every year. Malar­ia, for ex­am­ple, is con­sid­ered en­dem­ic in many parts of sub-Sa­ha­ran Africa and is es­ti­mat­ed to cause more than 200 mil­lion cas­es every year, in­clud­ing about 600,000 deaths.

“En­dem­ic in it­self does not mean good,” Ryan said. “En­dem­ic just means it’s here for­ev­er.”

Health of­fi­cials warn that even af­ter COVID-19 be­comes an es­tab­lished res­pi­ra­to­ry virus like sea­son­al flu, the virus will con­tin­ue to be fa­tal for some.

Even af­ter the pan­dem­ic ends, “COVID will still be with us,” said Dr. Chris Woods, an in­fec­tious dis­ease ex­pert at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. “The dif­fer­ence is peo­ple won’t be dy­ing in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly be­cause of it, and it will be so rou­tine that we will have much bet­ter and fair­er ac­cess to vac­cines, ther­a­peu­tics and di­ag­nos­tics for all.”

European UnionCOVID-19HealthUnited StatesUnited Nations


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored