An infectious disease expert from the University of Washington has predicted an end to the pandemic in March based on "new and emerging trends" that hopefully would remain stable.
KOMO News reported that University of Washington's top researcher for the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Dr. Ali Mokdad disclosed that the country will experience a similar phenomena to Europe's where COVID-19 mandates have been removed. Mokdad made his predictions based from the declining number of COVID-19 hospitalizations.
"We need to be realistic. We need to know what we are facing. Not to live in fear anymore," Mokdad said.
"In my opinion, come March the United States will be like European countries. No more mask mandates. We will not ask people to go and get the vaccine. We will not ask somebody arriving at (the) Seattle airport to have a PCR test before landing in Seattle. We don't do this for the flu and we should move on," he revealed.
Mokdad claimed the need to accept that getting vaccinated annually would become a regular thing. He said the pandemic will become an endemic that is similar to "any flu."
"I'm the guy who told you all time, 'masks, testing' everything. But, we've reached a level in my opinion we're in an endemic phase and we have to deal with COVID-19 as such. COVID-19 is going to be here. It's going to be like any flu. Every year you and I will get a COVID-19 shot before the season. It's seasonal. We're going to have a bad COVID season. But it's endemic. We need to move on," Mokdad reiterated.
In the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Global Data Projections On COVID-19, hospital resource use is expected to be in steady decline to almost zero in mid-2022 from the estimated 1.9M beds needed on February 2.
The projections parallel to that of estimated daily infections and testing of 1.7M globally by May 30, 2022. While daily deaths are projected at roughly 226 for the same period. Masking and social distancing will remain and even increase despite the projected decline of cases.
A matter Mokdad echoed in his recommendations locally. Unlike with European countries, Mokdad highlighted the need of Washington residents to exercise caution until the end of the pandemic actually comes. Mokdad stressed the continuous need of following the health protocols for COVID-19 as a means to be kept protected from any new variant, should one come.
"We should be very careful. Improve our surveillance systems. Make sure we are able to detect a surge or a rise in cases any time because we need to know as soon as possible if we have something different circulating in our community and cases starting to go up," Mokdad said.
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Director Dr. Christopher Murray confirmed in a February 4 statement that the "global landscape of COVID-19" shows "the epidemic has reached a peak, come down, and then about halfway down it's leveled out."
"So we expect eventually those numbers will shoot down. It does mean that at the national level, we may see somewhat more protracted epidemics than we expected," Murray said.
