What’s next after 5M Covid’s death?

Paris: Experts believe that the future path of the pandemic will depend heavily on vaccination, as the world is ready to attack more than 5 million people officially killed by the coronavirus.

How many dead? According to daily reports provided by national health authorities, the actual death toll is estimated to be well above 5 million.

The World Health Organization estimates that overall tolls can be two to three times higher than official records due to the excessive mortality rate associated with Covid-19.

The Economist examined excess mortality and concluded that about 17 million people died from Covid.

“This number seems more reliable to me,” Arnaud Fontanet, an epidemiologist at the Pasteur Institute, told Agence France-Presse.

In any case, the death toll is lower than other historic pandemics such as the Spanish flu (caused by another new virus), which killed 50 to 100 million people between 1918 and 1919.

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome has killed more than 36 million people in 40 years.

Nonetheless, Covid “died a lot in a short period of time,” said Jean-Claude Manugera, a virologist at the French Institute.

“Without all the measures, especially restrictions on migration and subsequent vaccination, it could have been much more dramatic,” Fontanet said.

Fontanet explained that the emergence of viruses usually occurs in two phases.

First, it is an “explosive epidemic stage” in which the virus spreads throughout the population and has never been touched.

In the second stage, your immunity increases and you “calm down” when you have endemic disease.

According to Fontanet, Covid is “the first time in the history of a pandemic that efforts have been made to accelerate the transition on a global scale.”

Acceleration was made possible by vaccination.

“This allows the population to artificially acquire immunity to unknown viruses, which usually takes three to five years in 18 months and causes even more deaths,” he said.

Therefore, the next step depends on the level of vaccination in each country and the effectiveness of the vaccine used.

“It will probably take months before a safety net is available everywhere. The problem is knowing if it is strong enough. The virus is still circulating. Today’s target is It’s no longer its removal, it’s a defense. It’s a serious type. “

What future are different countries waiting for? The pandemic aspect is expected to change with the waves after the waves that have been witnessed to decline in industrialized countries where most people have been vaccinated so far. Surge attacks unvaccinated people.

“For developed countries, I think we’re heading for a seasonal Covid epidemic, which will be a bit more serious than the flu epidemic of the first few years before it settled down,” Fontanet said. ..

He emphasized that the addition of vaccines to immunity from natural infections would build global immunity layer by layer.

Other countries with strong immunization capabilities, such as China and India, can follow a similar path.

Due to the high contagiousness of delta mutants, countries that have adopted the Zerocovid strategy to eradicate the disease are facing failure.

According to Fontanet, they are competing today to inoculate everyone, with Australia and New Zealand likely to catch up soon.

More difficult scenarios await areas with limited vaccine capacity, such as many in Africa.

A strong resurgence in Eastern Europe has confirmed that if a sufficient number of people are not vaccinated, the population will be exposed to a “serious epidemic affecting hospitals.” The biggest concern is the emergence of new mutants that are resistant to vaccination.

Delta wiped out previous variants, including Alpha, and stopped the spread of new strains such as Mu and Lambda.

But more than a whole new variant, experts now predict that the delta itself can mutate and become vaccine resistant.

“Delta is the main virus, so statistically there is a risk of seeing variants of the variant,” said Jean-Claude Manuguerra.

British authorities are monitoring a delta subvariant called AY4.2. So far, there is no evidence that the vaccine is less effective against it.

“It’s important to keep up with genome surveillance,” Manugera said, citing efforts to detect various mutants.

This allows us to “identify the emergence of variants quickly enough to know if they are more dangerous, more contagious, and if immunity is still functioning.”