Bisnis.com, JAKARTA – Two years after the spread of the pandemic, several countries have expressed their intention to start dealing with Covid-19 like other endemic diseases, such as seasonal flu.
Despite recording relatively high infection rates amid the frenetic spread of the Omicron variant, a number of countries including the UK and Ireland have relaxed restrictions on public life drastically.
The reason is that the Omicron variant causes less severe disease, although it is highly contagious, according to preliminary research.
Denmark has announced plans to lift all restrictions starting this week. The reason is that the Ministry of Health announced that Covid-19 would no longer be categorized as dangerous to the public.
Official messages from political leaders in Spain, the UK and elsewhere stressed that people need to learn to live with the virus.
“Covid-19 will not go away. He will be with us for many years, maybe forever, and we have to learn to live with him,” said Sajid Javid, Britain’s Minister of Health.
He believes his country will lead Europe in the transition from pandemic to endemic and will show the world how we can live with Covid-19.
However, officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that it was too early to treat Covid-19 as an endemic disease, stressing that the evolution of the virus was uncertain. Even the agency noted that on a global scale the pandemic continues to rage.
“We still have a large amount of uncertainty and the virus is evolving fast enough to present new challenges. We’re certainly not at a point where we can call it endemic,” said Catherine Smallwood, WHO’s senior emergency official for Europe.
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