The Health Workers Organization (WHO) says the European continent could end the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, thanks in large part to the highly transmissible Omicron variant, which proved to be less severe than the previously dominant COVID-19 variant, the Delta.
According to Regional Director for Europe, Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, two years after the discovery of COVID-19 in Europe and Central Asia, the pandemic is far from over, but he hopes that the pandemic is moving towards “a kind of pandemic endgame.”
Omicron is displacing Delta at an unprecedented rate. Less than two months after it was first detected in South Africa, it now accounts for 31.8% of cases in the European Region, up from 15% the previous week and 6.3% the previous week.” Kluge notes, pointing to the spread of the Omicron variant around the world, according to SchengenVisaInfo.com.
Dr. Kluge also emphasizes that people hospitalized with the omicron variant are less likely to end up in intensive care units, although most of those who need intensive care in Europe are unvaccinated.
Among EU member states insisting that the bloc needs to start getting used to living with COVID-19 is Spain, which has urged the rest of the EU to start treating the virus as endemic.
“We have to evaluate the evolution of Covid from a pandemic to an endemic disease,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in an interview on January 10.
Other EU countries will soon join Spain in this idea, as most of the member states recently eased travel restrictions, removing testing obligations and reducing quarantine periods, despite the distribution of Omicron.
Anticipating the end of the pandemic emergency in Europe, WHO also notes that new variants of COVID-19 will emerge and return due to weakened immunity and winter seasonality.
“But with careful observation and monitoring of new options, high levels of vaccination and use of third doses, ventilation, availability of antivirals, targeted testing and protection of high-risk groups with high-quality masks and physical distancing, if and when a new option emerges, I believe that the new wave will no longer require a return to pandemic measures, lockdown of the entire population or similar measures,” Dr. Kluge said, in part, in a statement.
According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), as of January 10 this year, almost two out of three people in the European Region had been infected with the COVID-19 virus at least once, or 63 percent of the continent’s population.
In total, 123 million cases have been identified in the region since the first cases of COVID-19 were detected, representing more than a third of the total number of confirmed cases worldwide.