People inoculated with more traditional inactivated vaccines, such as the widely used shots from China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd., will need at least two boosters – preferably with different vaccines – to control the virus, Yale’s Iwasaki said.
In the next six months, more countries will contend with whether to roll out a fourth shot. Israel has started and the U.S. backs them for vulnerable people, but India is pushing back and refusing to “blindly follow” other countries.
How We’ll Know When the Covid-19 Crisis Is Over
While the virus won’t be overwhelming hospitals and triggering restrictions forever, it’s still unclear when — or how — it will become safe to leave on the back burner.
Experts Bloomberg News spoke to agree that in developed countries including the U.S. and much of Europe, the virus could be well in hand by mid-2022. There will be better access to pills such as Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid, rapid antigen tests will be more readily available and people will have become accustomed to the idea that Covid is here to stay.
Robert Wachter, chair of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, puts the odds at 10-to-one that by the end of February, most parts of the U.S. and the developed world will no longer be struggling with severe outbreaks. Vaccinations and new treatments, widespread testing and immunity as a result of previous infections are helping. Countries like Denmark are getting rid of all pandemic restrictions despite ongoing outbreaks.
“That is a world that feels fundamentally different from the world of the last two years,” he said. “We get to come back to something resembling normal.”
“I don’t think it’s irrational for politicians to embrace that, for policies to reflect that.”
When Will the Pandemic End?
Elsewhere in the world, the pandemic will be far from over.
The threat of new variants is highest in less wealthy countries, particularly those where immune conditions are more common. The delta mutation was first identified in India while omicron emerged in southern Africa, apparently during a chronic Covid infection in an immunocompromised HIV patient.
“As long as we refuse to vaccinate the world, we will continue to see new waves,” Hotez said. “We are going to continue to have pretty dangerous variants coming out of low- and middle-income countries. That’s where the battleground is.”