People all around the world have the same question in their minds and that is when will the COVID-19 pandemic end? The question is pretty straightforward and seems easy to answer but after the outbreak of the virus in 2020 public health officials and experts are still not able to provide any guaranteed answer to this question.
The future scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic
When public health experts, officials, and leaders discuss the future scenario of some public health crisis they use the word “endemic” often. Hence, it is really very important to mention the time needed in the whole world for the COVID-19 pandemic’s shift to the COVID-19 endemic.
What does Endemic mean?
The Greek word endēmos is from where the word “endemic” has been derived. The normal circulation of a previously outbreaking virus in a specified or particular location, place, or area in a specified amount of time is called or known as an endemic virus.
Prediction by public health experts and scientists
Scientists and public health experts after a long time of research and experimenting on the virus have given the prediction that COVID-19 will eventually shift its situation from a COVID-19 pandemic’s situation to a COVID-19 endemic situation but it will still cause sporadic outbreaks overtime when the spreading will go out of control.
The outbreak of COVID-19
An outbreak is a large increase in the number of cases of a particular disease caused by a particular virus, bacteria, or any other kind of germs. The disease is expected to spread in a specific small geographic location generally over a short or specified period. This happened within the case of the Corona Virus when it caused its first outbreak in the city of Wuhan located in China.
COVID-19 becoming an epidemic and pandemic eventually
By the word epidemic, the public health officials and experts generally mean the outbreak of a disease caused by a specific virus, bacteria, or any other germs without the restriction of geographic position or conditions. When Corona Virus started spreading in the whole world it became an epidemic virus and when the spread became out of control it became a pandemic virus.
The shift from pandemic to an endemic situation
A disease is called endemic when it spreads in a restricted geographic location or place under certain conditions in highly predictable patterns which will help public health officials and experts get the permanent cure against the disease spreading the virus.
The usual path of shifting from a pandemic to an endemic
After a long time of research and experiments conducted by the public health officials and experts that they came up with useful precautions that helped to slow down the circulation of the disease-causing dangerous virus. Precautions such as wearing masks, washing hands with soaps, using sanitizers helped to kill the spreading virus resulting in slowing down the diseases and deaths.
The researches conducted by the public health experts and the public health officials was to experiment the weather conditions and the different kinds of physical conditions the virus can or cannot survive and according to the observations and conclusions of those experiments they warned the general public.
The warnings given by them helped to slow down the spread of the Corona Virus and it has now been controlled around the whole world. This is the usual path of the shift of pandemically spreading virus or disease into an endemically spreading one.
The minimum time needed for COVID-19 to become an endemic disease spreader
The mathematical models issued after different scientific studies conducted all around the world shows the different scenarios that may arise due to the different epidemic outbreak of the Corona Virus. Most of the studies suggest that the Corona Virus will not disappear so soon.
Most scientists, public health experts, and government officials feel that the Corona Virus is here to stay. They expect the number of infections caused by the virus will be fairly constant in the next few years and the spread will occur on a seasonal or particular area based.
Globally the road from pandemic to endemic in the case of COVID-19 will be a rocky one. It will not happen at every corner around the world at the same time because the time of the transition depends on the climate of a particular place, the soil conditions, and the rate of vaccination of a particular country.
The only thing for people to do in this situation
The most important and effective thing that the general public can do is getting vaccinated as fast as possible and follow the precautions provided by the doctors and public health officials or experts so that they do not get badly affected by the virus and keep the spreading of the dangerous death-causing virus at a slow pace.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article has helped you to know about the different aspects of the COVID-19 and the different things we should do so that the pandemic becomes an endemic situation.