What Future Does COVID Have After Five Million Deaths?
With the world poised to meet more than five million people officially killed by the coronavirus, experts told AFP that the future course of the pandemic will depend largely on vaccines.
How Many Deaths?
The actual number of deaths is estimated at well over five million in each country, as per the daily reports from health authorities.
The World Health Organization estimates that the total number of victims due to excess mortality related to Covid-19 could be two to three times higher than official figures.
The Economist magazine analyzed excess mortality and concluded that around 17 million people have died from Covid.
“This number seems more credible to me,” the epidemiologist at the Pasteur Institute, Professor Arnaud Fontanet, told AFP.
Regardless, the death toll is lower than other historic pandemics like the Spanish flu, which was caused by another new virus that killed 50 to 100 million people in 1918-1919.
AIDS has killed more than 36 million people in 40 years.
However, Covid has “caused many deaths in a short time,” said Jean-Claude Manuguerra, a virologist at the French institute.
“Without all the measures taken, including restricted mobility and vaccines, it could have been much more dramatic,” said Fontanet.
Have We Reached A Plateau?
The appearance of a virus usually comes in two phases, explained Fontanet.
First, an “explosive epidemic phase” in which the virus spreads through a population that has never been exposed to it before.
In the second phase, it kicks in when immunity builds up and becomes endemic.
With Covid “this is the first time in the history of the pandemics that efforts are being made on a global level to accelerate the transition between the two phases,” said Fontanet.
The acceleration was made possible by vaccines.
“This allowed the population to artificially gain immunity to a virus they didn’t know about and do so in 18 months, which usually takes three to five years with many more deaths,” he said.
Therefore, the next steps will vary depending on the level of immunization in each country and the effectiveness of the vaccines used.
“We are probably a few months away from having a safety net everywhere. The problem is whether it’s strong enough.”
“This virus will continue to circulate. The goal today is no longer to eliminate them but to protect them from serious types. said Fontanet.”
“The idea is that Covid doesn’t lead to the hospital or the cemetery,” added Manuguerra.
What future awaits the different nations?
The face of the pandemic is expected to change wave after wave, which so far has seen its demise in developed countries, where most people are vaccinated. A sudden increase particularly affects the unvaccinated.
“For developed countries, I think we are headed for seasonal outbreaks of Covid, which may be a little more severe than the flu epidemic in the first few years before it breaks out,” said Fontanet.
Global immunity is being built layer by layer, he said, and vaccines would increase immunity to natural infections.
Other countries like China or India with strong vaccination capacities could take a similar path.
Nations that have adopted a zero covid strategy to eradicate the disease are doomed to failure due to the highly contagious nature of the Delta variant.
Today they are rushing to vaccinate everyone, Fontanet said, with the likely result that Australia and New Zealand, for example, will quickly catch up.
More difficult scenarios await regions with limited vaccine capacities, such as large parts of Africa.
The strong resurgence in Eastern Europe has confirmed that the lack of vaccinations for a sufficient number of people exposes the population to “serious epidemics affecting hospitals,” Fontanet said.
Certainly, the current increase in cases in Western Europe must be cautious despite high vaccination rates.
“We must not have a vision centered on Europe: in the event of a pandemic, the entire planet must be taken into account. And for the moment the pandemic has not stopped,” warned Jean-Claude Manuguerra.
What About The New Variants?
The biggest fear is the emergence of new vaccine-resistant varieties.
Delta abandoned previous varieties, including Alpha, and prevented the spread of newer varieties such as Mu or Lambda.
But more than completely new variants, experts now speculate that Delta itself mutates and may become resistant to vaccines.
“Delta is the main virus. Statistically, we run the risk of seeing a variant of a variant,” Manuguerra said.
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UK authorities are monitoring a Delta sub-variant called AY4.2. There is currently no evidence that vaccines are less effective against this.
“It is important to follow the surveillance of the genome,” said Manugerra, referring to efforts to identify different variants.
It allows “to detect the appearance of variants with sufficient speed and to know if they are more dangerous and transferable and if the immunity continues to work”.
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