After 2 years of curfews, lockdown, mask mandates and movement restrictions, one question that arose several times is, if the world is ready to take a step ahead and consider Covid an endemic?
According to European health experts, it is high time the world starts treating Covid-19 like a normal flu.
Call it ‘getting back to normal’ or entering into a new era of the Covid-19 pandemic, but several countries, especially in the West, are moving towards accepting the coronavirus spread as an endemic and have begun treating it as mere flu. Spain is the recent case in point.
However, the health experts in India and across warn strictly against dropping the guards against coronavirus as it is an ever-changing virus.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has clearly and vehemently opposed the idea of treating Covid like an endemic and warned against dropping restrictions, especially mask mandates.
According to Zee news, India, Health body chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently said that Omicron is less severe than the Delta variant of the coronavirus but is still killing and affecting people, especially those unvaccinated.
However, the WHO itself admitted that most people in Europe will be infected with the new variant.
On the other side, several health experts in the United States are favoring the idea of treating Covid like a flue with maximum focus on vaccination against the virus.
Dr Clive, a UK based health expert and the former chairman of the country’s vaccine task force recently said that it’s time to consider entering an endemic stage and treat COVID like a flu.
However, health experts in Spain are themselves divided on the ‘treat COVID like a flu approach’.
“It’s a mistake to think that the problem will no longer exist by not counting infections, or by reducing the number of days of isolation, or by establishing quarantines in schools with five children instead of maintaining what was had. The problem continues to be there, and it has to be addressed,” López Acuna, a leading epidemiologist and former WHO directive told a Spanish broadcaster
Since Spain is the first country to officially announce that it will treat Covid like an endemic now, it’s pertinent to understand the developing trend of the virus in the country.
In the last week, Spain recorded more than 100 Covid-related deaths on a daily basis.
The heaviest question however remains, is the world yet ready to treat the Corona virus as a normal flu?