Thai experts: Covid-19 endgame now in sight
RAMATHIBODI Hospital's Centre for Medical Genomics said in a Facebook post yesterday (Jan. 16) their specialists are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel with the endgame of the Covid-19 pandemic now likely to set in and the infection will turn into an endemic disease like the flu, Sanook.com said.
Researchers at this centre tested Covid samples from public and private hospitals during Jan. 3-16, 2022 and found 97.1 percent (69/71) to be Omicron variant and 2.8 percent (2/71) Delta.
However random samples from prisons showed 100 percent (30/30) Delta strain.
This then means that in Bangkok, excluding the prisons, Omicron would have almost completely replaced Delta.
The "twindemic" of both strains of Covid-19 spreading simultaneously for a short time has now ended and soon Omicron will spread nationwide.
This would be in keeping with what Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to US President Joe Biden, said recently that Omicron will infect "just about everybody" across the US.
After that the number of people who have immunity through vaccination or naturally so through infection will skyrocket with this reducing mortality rate rapidly and this phenomenon can be clearly seen worldwide through data on new Omicron cases and fatalities.
The number of new cases in South Africa has dropped to normal while the death toll was not substantial. There is a large population with naturally acquired infection.
The number of new cases in the UK has continued to decline while the death toll here too was not substantial. Britain uses viral vector vaccines with the booster jab being mRNA.
American experts expect new infections to peak in one to two weeks and likewise the death toll here is not substantial. The US uses mRNA vaccines for both the first two jabs and the booster.
Low infection rates have occurred in countries bordering Thailand as well as Iran where there was a high caseload of natural infection before inactivated virus vaccine jabs were administered followed by mRNA booster jab with very good result.
Thailand has few natural infections with people getting inactivated virus vaccine jabs followed by mRNA booster shot and this also led to a good result as even though the number of new cases has increased, fatalities have dropped.
Should this continue and Covid endgame is reached and it turns into an endemic disease like seasonal flu the fatality rate would be 0.1 percent, the experts said.
Meanwhile the Public Health Ministry said there were 6,929 new coronavirus cases and 13 deaths over the 24 hours to this morning (Jan. 17) with this taking the cumulative confirmed totals since Jan.1, 2022 to 107,979 and since the start of the pandemic 2,331,414.
The 13 additional fatalities raised the death toll to 21,938.
Another 5,255 patients were cured taking total recoveries since Jan. 1, 2022 to 58,772 with 82,210 patients still undergoing treatment.
