Covid in some ways will be there forever: Dr Ashish Jha
COVID-19 in some ways will be there forever but the worst days of the pandemic are ‘absolutely‘ over, said Dr Ashish K Jha, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator.
Speaking at the 20th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, Jha said given the high levels of immunity in the population due to both vaccination and prior infections, ‘even if we see surges and variants the worst of this pandemic should be behind us'.
‘Covid is not over and in some ways it will be with us forever and we just have to continue to manage it but if the question is are the worst days of covid behind us then my answer is absolutely, it is,' he said.
With variants cropping up at regular intervals, Jha acknowledged that they are a concern as a very rapid evolution of this virus is being seen over the time.
‘...the speed at which SARS-CoV-2 is evolving is really remarkable. And there are a variety of reasons why this is happening - the primary one is we have so much immunity across the world due to vaccinations and prior infections that is putting evolutionary pressure on the virus to find a way around that immunity wall,' he said.
Highlighting the emergence of more and more immune evasive variants of the virus, he said, ‘But the good thing is as the virus is changing so is humanity. We are able to do things like update vaccines and we are able to do things like keep up with the virus...So while it worries me that the virus continues to do what it does, it reassures me that we as humanity can respond to it and are not powerless in terms of how we deal with it.'
On there being surges from time to time whenever there is a new variant, Jha said for a little bit longer there will be more of these ups and downs in terms of surges and over the time the virus will settle into more of a seasonal pattern where it will act a bit more like influenza virus.
‘I do believe there will come a time when this will be very seasonal as many other coro-naviruses are,' he added.