The United States, Great Britain, Portugal, and India are expected to be the first countries to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic due to some combination of high rates of vaccination and natural immunity among people who were infected with the coronavirus. This was reported by Reuters, according to the publication’s interviews with over a dozen leading disease experts.
Besides charting when, and where, COVID-19 will transition to an endemic disease in 2022 and beyond, scintists also warn that SARS-CoV-2 remains an unpredictable virus that is mutating as it spreads through unvaccinated populations.
None would completely rule out what some called a "doomsday scenario," in which the virus mutates to the point that it evades hard-won immunity. Yet they expressed increasing confidence that many countries will have put the worst of the pandemic behind them in the coming year.
"We think between now and the end of 2022, this is the point where we get control over this virus ... where we can significantly reduce severe disease and death," Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist leading the World Health Organization's (WHO) COVID-19 response, told Reuters.
The agency's view is based on work with disease experts who are mapping out the probable course of the pandemic over the next 18 months. By the end of 2022, the WHO aims for 70% of the world's population to be vaccinated.
"If we reach that target, we will be in a very, very different situation epidemiologically," Van Kerkhove said.
In the meantime, she worries about countries lifting COVID precautions prematurely. "It's amazing to me to be seeing, you know, people out on the streets, as if everything is over."
COVID-19 cases and deaths have been declining since August in nearly all regions of the world, according to the WHO's report on October 26. Europe has been an exception, with Delta wreaking new havoc in countries with low vaccination coverage such as Russia and Romania, as well as places that have lifted mask-wearing requirements. But, even where cases are spiking as countries drop pandemic restrictions, as in the UK, vaccines appear to be keeping people out of the hospital.
Several experts said they expect the U.S. Delta wave will wrap up this month, and represent the last major COVID-19 surge.