Washington: Even if enough people build natural immunity to Covid-19 by catching the highly contagious Omicron variant, top US infectious disease expert Anthony S. Fauci said it is too soon to say if this will spell an end to the pandemic.
Speaking at the Davos Agenda virtual event on Monday, Fauci said that “natural vaccination”, or immunity via the previous infection, might not be as effective as some believe, the Daily Mail reported.
While Omicron seems to cause less severe disease than other variants, Dr. Fauci said the sheer volume of cases could have a meaningful effect on collective immunity, but added, “it is an open question as to whether or not Omicron is going to be the live virus vaccination that everyone is hoping for, because you have such a great deal of variability with new variants emerging.”
“I would hope that that’s the case,” he said, “but that would only be the case if we don’t get another variant that eludes the immune response.”
Dr. Fauci said the evolution of the pandemic is still an open question. “The answer is: We do not know,” he said.
Dr. Fauci also said that the world is still in the first of what he considered to be the five phases of the pandemic. The first is the “truly pandemic” phase, “where the whole world is really very negatively impacted,” followed by deceleration, control, elimination and eradication.
He said that only one infectious human disease has ever been eradicated: smallpox.
“That’s not going to happen with this virus,” he said.
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