Covid 19 cases in the U.S.
have dropped dramatically since the fast spreading Omicron variant drove infections to their highest point.
New COVID infections have dropped 95% from their peak in January of 2022.
While hospitalizations have tapered off by 84%.
The precipitous decline has led many cities and states and even the White House to drop their long held COVID
restrictions two years into a pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the global economy.
Many are beginning to wonder, Is COVID 19 becoming endemic?
There's a high probability that by moving into endemic settings.
It feels very much like we are on that road from pandemic to endemic, that we'll be able to live with
this in a normal way.
I know some are talking about living with COVID 19, but tonight I say that we never will just
accept living with COVID 19.
We'll continue to combat the virus.
But what does it mean when a virus like COVID 19 becomes endemic?
That can be unclear even among global health experts.
Covid is probably not going to go away.
We're probably going to have to contend with it next winter.
Next fall and winter, I think for the foreseeable future, for the spring and the summer.
It's not going to go away in the US.
It's not going to go away in Europe.
There's not going to be a magic freedom day from COVID.
So a pandemic is when you have an epidemic, epidemic spread of a
disease across large regions in the world, such as what we're experiencing now with with Omicron that's
affecting large numbers of people and causing large not only large numbers of infections in cases, but what
we care about is hospitalizations and deaths.
An endemic diseases is where you have a stable number of people over time that are being infected.
So you have continuous transmission, but you may have peaks and valleys of that.
Endemic does not mean good.
You know, it's not like, oh, great, it's endemic.
We've got a lot of endemic diseases.
I think the one that really springs to mind easily is malaria.
It kills millions of people every year.
What endemic means is you've got that disease in your community and your region
continually.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and endemic, is characterized by the constant presence or
the unusual prevalence of a disease or infectious agent in a population within a geographic area.
Other endemic diseases include HIV and tuberculosis, but categorizing viruses as endemic can be murky,
like when it comes to influenza.
The one issue that comes up is that not all endemic disease is the same.
You can have high grade, endemic, high, high, endemic transmission.
You can have mid endemic transmission and low endemic transmission.
A good example of high endemic transmission is influenza.
Endemic to me again means different things.
I think about viruses or pathogens that are endemic to certain regions, meaning that they're specifically localized
in certain places.
Flu to me is not endemic because you find it globally, right?
It's all over the world.
The World Health Organization rocked the globe when it first classified COVID-19 as pandemic.
Technically, the global health organization doesn't have the authority to declare pandemics, and the same is true for
when COVID 19 becomes endemic.
We do not declare a pandemic.
There was a short period in the history of international public health where pandemics were declared, and that was
for influenza.
And that whole mechanism ceased in back in 2019.
Quite quietly.
We have another mechanism that was agreed by all countries called the Declaration of a Public Health Emergency of
International Concern.
And an expert committee has brought together people who are expert in not just the virus, but in all the other sort of
issues around it.
And they examine the evidence every three months.
The first thing they have to tell us is, is it still an emergency?
And each time they said, oh, yes, it's an emergency.
This long debate about endemic and pandemic has really become, I think, a
vocabulary debate a little bit.
I think this concept of what is the end game is way more important in understanding what is our end look like
is much bigger than a single word.
It is what is our reality moving forward two and one half years into this.
I think there are two issues that really decide what that transition from pandemic to
pandemic will be.
The first is, is that part of the answer is in our hands, and that's going to be how well we are
or disseminating public health interventions and particularly vaccinations throughout the world.
So the second part is somewhat may or may not be in our hands, but that's the way if we're going to
encounter new variants such as Omicron, which may arise in one region and spread very quickly in the
other, and how virulent and transmissible those those strains are going to be.
There's a virus that transmits really efficiently between people.
We are highly susceptible to it.
While we have some immunity, both through vaccination and natural infection, we do know that people can become
reinfected with it, you know, even after that immunity.
Well, look, I think it's prudent that governors think about what the off switch looks like, as well as what the on
switch looks like when it comes to this mitigation.
We can't just implement these kinds of provisions and not have a very clear metric for when we're going to lift them.
The Biden administration has unveiled a 96 page national preparedness plan it thinks will serve as a roadmap to
return the nation to more normal routines.
The plan outlines four priorities: protect against and treat COVID-19, prepare for new variants, prevent
economic and education shutdowns, and continue to vaccinate the world.
The plan comes just days after the CDC released its own updated masking guidance, which suggests that a majority of
Americans can stop wearing masks depending on their county.
But several U.S. states have already started to forge their own paths out of the pandemic.
I can't promise a new variant won't come, but I can promise you we'll do everything within our power to be ready
if it does.
The White House's pandemic playbook is already facing hurdles on Capitol Hill.
Congressional lawmakers completely dropped additional COVID funding in their latest one and a half trillion dollar
spending bill, while Democrats vowed to continue working with Republicans to pass the funding.
It's unclear if there will be enough support to move through the Senate.
The funds are designed to preserve the nation's vaccination and testing efforts and pay for the development of a single
COVID vaccine targeting all coronavirus variants.
They would also set up a test and treat program to provide antiviral pills immediately after someone tests positive for
COVID.
The reasons why I'm concerned it is because right now the only vehicle that Americans can access
vaccines or the pills, particularly because they are under emergency use authorization, it is only through purchases
from the government. There are no other channels.
It's not allowed to go and sell it right now through, let's say, the normal channels that all the medicines are finding
their way to the patients.
So if the government doesn't have money, nobody can get the vaccine.
So it's a concern.
The administration also plans to use the funds to invest in vaccination programs globally, an effort that experts say is
critical when it comes to exiting the pandemic.
Most of last year, we were just screaming, just begging for vaccines, vaccines that we'd booked up, that we had the
money to pay for, but we couldn't get them because, you know, the bigger elephants in the room had got there
first. So equity hasn't been great but is improving.
And we, at W.H.O., are really hoping that 2022 is the year the world truly comes together,
understands that equity isn't just a lovely idea.
It's something that will save all our lives.
We will not get out of the COVID pandemic unless we really leave no one behind in all parts,
all parts of the world.
The example of Omicron is an excellent one.
Within one month of this variant being identified in South Africa, it spread throughout the world.
We're going to have to come up with a solution that's not just for the United States and not just for the state of
Connecticut. We're not just for Europe.
It's going to have to be for the entire world.