COVID-19 may indeed become a seasonal illness with predictable patterns of infection — but it's not there yet, epidemiologists and infectious disease experts say.
May 26, 2022, 2:22 PMIn this Jan. 13, 2022, file photo, a woman gets a COVID-19 test done by a healthcare worker in North Miami, Fla.COVID-19 may indeed become a seasonal illness with predictable patterns of infection -- but it's not there yet, epidemiologists and infectious disease experts say.
But it's just not possible to "fit the square peg of SARS-CoV-2 into the round hole of influenza just yet," said Dr. James Lawler, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center's Global Center for Health Security in Omaha. "Whether you call it shift, or drift, or continuous evolution of the virus, it doesn't seem to be slowing down," he added.Experts agreed that evolution of SARS-CoV-2 actually appears to be accelerating, given what's been observed with the evolution of variants in the Omicron family.
That doesn't necessarily mean we'll see more virulent disease or, if making the maligned comparison to flu, a big "shift" that causes a huge surge in hospitalizations and death, Adalja said. Evolution would likely favor more transmissible or more immune-evasive variants, but not a variant that "keeps people in bed," he said.
"I don't think that immune-evasive variants can erase all the protection that the immune system gives you," he said. "It might be able to get around some of the protection that antibodies confer and cause infections, but to cause severe disease is a much higher ask."
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