‘Covid-19 will eventually become a common cold’

Residents in line at a CityMD location to receive a COVID-19 test in the Bed-Stuy neighbourhood of Brooklyn on January 10 in NYC. Pic/AFP

The UK may be on the brink of beating the Covid-19 pandemic, with daily deaths currently running at less than half the rate expected in a bad flu year, the media reported.

According to Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious disease expert from the University of East Anglia, the Covid pandemic will become ‘endemic' after the Omicron wave subsides in the country, provided no other variants emerge, Daily Mail reported. Yet Hunter noted that Covid would "almost certainly" get weaker every year as people develop natural immunity and eventually become a common cold that kills only the very vulnerable further down the line.

"Once we're past this Omicron peak, excluding another unexpected variant that reverses all of our progress, then we'll be close to the point of endemic," he was quoted saying. Currently, about 130 people are dying from Covid every day in England at what is believed to be the peak of the Omicron outbreak, compared to 1,300 last January before vaccines were widely available, the report said. But government estimates show there were more than 400 influenza deaths per day at the peak of the last bad flu season in 2017/18, and almost 300 daily fatalities previous year.

7 mn new omicron cases

There were more than 7 million new omicron cases across Europe in the first week of January, more than double in just two weeks, the World Health Organisation said.

China locks down third city

A third Chinese city has locked down its residents because of a Covid-19 outbreak, raising the number confined to their homes in China to about 20 million people. It wasn't clear how long the lockdown of Anyang, home to 5.5 million people, would last. Mass testing was being enforced, standard procedure whenever outbreaks pop up around the country. Another 13 million people are locked down in Xi'an and 1.1 million in Yuzhou, with restrictions on Tianjin, only about an hour from Beijing, which is to host the Winter Olympics from Feb. 4.

UK PM faces more lockdown-breach claims over party

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced more allegations he and his staff flouted Covid-19 lockdown rules, this time with a garden party in 2020 while Britons were barred by law from mingling outside the home. Opposition politicians called for a police investigation after ITV published a leaked email invitation to "socially distanced drinks" in the garden of the PM's Downing Street office and residence.

Pfizer's Omicron specific vax by March: CEO

Pfizer's vaccine that specifically targets the Omicron variant will be ready in March, its CEO Albert Bourla has said. The vaccine will also target other circulating variants.

17,36,233
No. of new cases reported globally in the past 24 hours

30,59,14,601
Total no. of cases worldwide

54,86,304
Total no. of deaths worldwide

Source: WHO/Johns Hopkins

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