But the world is not out of the woods yet
On January 27, 2020, India reported its first COVID-19 case. And almost three years and over 500,000 deaths later, the disease appears to have become endemic in India.
Epidemiologists say a disease is endemic when its presence becomes steady in a particular region, or at least predictable, as with seasonal flu. This means that the disease is still a pandemic at the global level, but the risk of a new severe outbreak in India is negligible.
It’s not in India but the disease arguably has become endemic in most European countries as well.
“In India, till mid-2022, there was a high chance that new COVID-19 patients, particularly those with partial or no vaccination shots, would develop moderate to severe forms of the disease. Now, even though new cases are being reported, the share of Indians requiring hospitalisation has become almost negligible,” said Chandrakant Lahariya, epidemiologist.
Whether a disease has become endemic to a geographical region depends on a host of factors, including the population profile, natural infection rate, vaccination coverage and the efficacy of the vaccine used.
For instance, COVID-19 has not become endemic in China as the country has a low rate of natural immunity, used a vaccine with relatively lower efficacy and has a large unvaccinated elderly population. But in the United States, the problem is different with low vaccine coverage due to its widespread anti-vaccination campaigns.
But the world is not out of the woods yet. In 2022, a cumulative 651.76 million cases were reported globally till December 15, 2022. (According to the data website Our World in Data)
This year saw at least 107 countries with the highest number of COVID-19 cases in a year since the outbreak began in 2020. The 2022 caseload for 86 of these countries was higher than the combined caseload for 2020 and 2021.
In contrast, the year accounted for only 17.9 per cent of the 6.66 million deaths due to disease. So, even though the pandemic is still making its rounds, the data shows that it is time for us to be cautiously optimistic about living in a pandemic-free world again.
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