Expert is ‘unclear’ if virus will ever be beaten

IT is not clear if Covid-19 will become endemic, an infectious disease specialist has said.

Professor David Heymann, a leading expert on infection outbreak control, said it was not possible to predict the “destiny” of a new infection.

The new coronavirus outbreak is on trajectory to continue transmitting “for a time”, but it is unclear whether it will be long-term, he said.

But he warned it

“may be that it can’t be eliminated as it is now”.

Citing the situation in China, Mr Heymann, who led the global shutdown of the Sars outbreak in 2003, said that despite “severe lockdown measures” the virus has not been eliminated.

“Despite their extreme measures they still have a little bit about – I think they had nine cases in one day recently, whereas in imported cases they’ve had over 100 or 200 a day of cases being imported in Chinese coming back, etc,” he told an online briefing.

“So, it would be nice if this could be eliminated. But it looks like – and we’re watching very closely, what’s happening in China – it looks like it hasn’t been eliminated from China.

“If that’s the case, under these severe lockdown measures, then it may be that it can’t be eliminated.

“We can’t really predict the destiny of a new and emerging infection.

“At present, we can only say it’s in populations now, and that it looks like it’s on a trajectory to continue transmitting for a time, but we just don’t know what will happen in the long-term.

“We know that some influenza viruses transmit quite significantly. And then they disappear.

“So you know it’s not really clear that this virus will become endemic. Every day, the chances are more and more that it may at least linger longer than we hope.”