Coronavirus becoming a “more predictable seasonal bug like the flu or common cold.”
Subheadline.
QUICK FACTS:
- Top scientists in Africa say Malawi is just one of many countries on the continent that appear to have already reached—if not quite endemicity—at least a substantially less threatening stage, as evidenced by studies of the population’s prior exposure to the coronavirus and its experience with the omicron variant, NPR reports.
- Malawi immunologist Kondwani Jambo says the study findings suggest that Malawi has achieved a “holy grail: the endemic stage of the pandemic, in which the coronavirus becomes a more predictable seasonal bug like the flu or common cold.”
- South Africa University of the Witwatersrand vaccinologist Shabir Madhi sad, “I think we should draw comfort from the fact that this has been the least severe wave in the country.”
- Madhi attributes South Africa’s resilience to coronavirus not to vaccinations but to gained natural immunity through prior infections.
- The vaccinologist also says of the region that it has “come to a point where at least three-quarters—and now after omicron, probably 80%—of South Africans have developed immunity and at least protection against severe disease and death.”
- This holy grail situation in Malawi was achieved through a very low vaccination rate, less than 8% of the country’s population receiving an injection, according to Google data, only 4.2% being fully vaccinated.
WHY MALAWI IS RESISTANT TO COVID-19:
- As fewer than 5% of Malawians have been fully vaccinated, Kondwani Jambo, who works for the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, says the country’s resistance to severe disease was likely built up as a result of all the prior exposure to earlier variants, notes NPR.
- “Now we have had the beta variant—we have had the delta variant and the original,” says Jambo. “It seems like a combination of those three has been able to neutralize this omicron variant in terms of severe disease.”
BACKGROUND:
- The number of people turning up in hospitals was also quite low, even during the peak of each successive Covid-19 wave in Malawi, according to NPR.
