The U.S. Is in a ‘Controlled Pandemic’ Phase of COVID-19. But What Does That Mean?

They were the words everyone has been waiting to hear—that the COVID-19 pandemic is dialing down from the five-alarm fire that flared up in 2020 to a somewhat lesser conflagration. On April 27, the U.S.’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, described the country as in a “transitional phase, from a deceleration of the numbers into hopefully a more controlled phase and endemicity” in an interview with the Washington Post. His comments come almost two years to the day after pharmaceutical manufacturers shipped the first batches of their COVID-19 vaccines for early testing. Fauci noted that those vaccines, as well as drug treatments that can control the virus in infected people, are largely responsible for the fact that the initial urgency of the pandemic as a public health threat is over. But COVID-19 itself isn’t quite finished with us. The virus continues to mutate, and the latest variations being reported out of South Africa—new subvariants of Omicron including BA.4 and BA.5—are sobering reminders that the virus isn’t standing still. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “Pandemic” vs. “Endemic” Although we may be out of the urgent pandemic phase, we’re not quite ready to call COVID-19 endemic, which would mean the virus is still among us but relatively under control, similar to influenza. And it’s not clear when that will happen. And even if it does, health experts may not all ag...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news